July Teen Book Club Report:

Hey guys, today I'm back with another post about How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. Yesterday evening was the first book club meeting I have attended with a notebook. Lmao... That's because it's the first meeting that I've been to that I have had a blog. So for you guys I sacrificed... I'm not sure exactly what, but I did... And I did take a lot of notes. The thing about a book club is that we all come for the food and tea and just to discuss books in general so usually it's very disorganised... I.E. COMPLETE CHAOS... Yea that about sums it up. If you read my review of How I Live Now, which I posted yesterday, you should know approximately what this book is about. If you didn't you should go check that out here: And if you didn't and don't want to (dw I understand) I'll give you a brief synopsis straight from Goodreads (Shout out to wherever Goodreads gets their wonderful book synopsiss, thank you, they're very helpful! :) )

"Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.” 

So now that you know a little about what the book is about, or a lot if you read my review, let's start. I just wanted to start off by saying how excited I am for each meeting, just because I get to have tea (like a real lady, ;) ) and because I get to see my friends and talk about books. Usually I am very busy, during the school year, and I sometimes don't have the time to read the book, but in the summer I have lots of free time. I just leave it off to the last second because my own tbr list is sooo long (click here if you want to see my tbr post). Most importantly I was especially excited for this meeting because I knew that I could take notes and then blog about it :), as well as that it's summer and I don't have that much to do, so I've been waiting for it for a while.

Just to show you how excited I was here are my notes!!! (excuse my terrible hurried writing) :

So getting to what we actually did, finally... (Note: As this was a 1 hour meeting and we had a lot of discuss it was very crammed, sorry if it seems to be to be very rushed.. )

The first thing that happened was that two girls gave a very interesting synopsis, with the obvious key points. Edmond reading minds, children having weird abilities like talking to animals, the end with the gardening together (it being very cliche), and Edmond seeing massacre connecting with the "high on shrooms" night... So as you can see it was a very amusing and highly informative review (hm hm not, but hilarious none the less) Then our group leader/librarian person (let's just call her T)  tried very hard as usual to get us back on track by us answering some questions. But that never really works (T tries it every time) because with every question we end up having a 10 min discussion that ends up going back to them being high or them making out (Edmond/Daisy)... so in other words, us being very productive... 

First were some pretty easy multiple choice questions that T thought were hard but were actually not. (They never are, but it's more fun that way, lol) We talked about warfare and innocence being a theme, the comparison between England and New York, Piper as portraying innocence, when Piper said, "I think those mushrooms aren't poisonous...", and them obviously being poisonous and having a weird effect on the girls, making them hallucinate. We also mentioned how it hit her really hard when she finally realised how stupid starving herself was, and whether or not she had a mental illness (like anorexia). Also how she realised that having a good family makes you stronger and makes you have the ability to lift cars (like in the movies, to save your family). We were wondering what happened to Baz, aka "the nice soldier dude who gave them cheese", at the end, and to all those soldiers in that hut and Alby and his mom. We also talked about how this book is supposedly supposed to take place in the future like it being world war 3 (a dystopian), but it actually seeming like it took place in the past (it being a historical fiction). But you gotta keep in mind that it was written in 2004, 12 years ago so... That's probably why. We also talked about something I really picked up on too, how Edmond seemed like that "edgy kid", because he picked her up from the airport alone while smoking a cigarette... 

We also had some in depth discussions on longer questions (T actually brought like 12 but we got to 3, that's how amazingly productive we are. But we do discuss a lot)  (Also for the question below keep in mind that the answers are not all mine, and that I do not agree with some of them, they are just what we as a group discussed and came up with)

1. Why do you think the author left out punctuation/quotation marks/grammar from this book?

(Note: I guess this reflects very badly on me but I didn't notice that there weren't any quotations, only that there were no comas and this bottthhhhereeed me... ugh)

Well we basically said there were a few reasons. It could have been because she was lazy, wanted to be unique, wanted it to feel like a diary, wanted it to feel like a teen's writing style, wanted it to be less formal, or just because she had no editor (apparently true fact). We also mentioned how there was a lot of "word vomit" at the very beginning as if she just wanted to say everything at once and get it out (Daisy not Meg). On the back it says "A book for all ages", and as somebody pointed out that, IT IS NOT! Because we don't want to give little kids the idea that it's okay to hook up with your cousins... Maybe they're all just stupid? 

2. Why would Meg Rosoff bring in the idea of two cousins being in love? Why would she go down that road?

We though... Maybe she wanted it to be a bestseller and the best way was to make it really creepy and weird. Maybe she was writing from experience because she was in love with her cousin. She wanted to put an interesting element into the book so that people would talk more about it. And maybe it didn't really matter that it was her cousin because she was just so into it, and he was the only normal guy, and Daisy had to have a love interest. 

We also randomly mentioned, while T was trying to read the question in a British accent (which failed) that butty (pronounced: bo-tt-y) means sandwich in England and that butty bars are sandwich bars. <-- (Fun fact, lol)

3. If you were to pick a soundtrack for this book, which songs would you put on it? 

- Bring me to life ~ Evenescence

- Can't keep my hands to myself (suggested as a joke) ~ Selena Gomez

- It's Time ~ Imagine Dragons

- Bleeding Out ~ Imagine Dragons

- Just Tonight ~ The Pretty Reckless

Then after we finally got through our 3 questions we didn't have time for any more because they had to clean the carpets in the little room our book club takes place, so sadly we couldn't stay for 30 minutes extra, as usual (but we just chilled in the library anyways). So as tradition goes everybody recommends a book at the end of each meeting, and the books recommended for this month are:

- The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

- The Diary of a Young Girl ~ Anne Frank 

- City of Bones ~ Cassandra Clare (Great series guys!)

- Every Last Word ~ Tamara Ireland Stone 

- Uglies ~  Scott Westerfeld

- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (obviously me, as I am the only one reading harry potter for the 1st time... sadly) ~ J.K. Rowling

- Eve + Adam ~ Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

- Heroes of Olympus ~ Rick Riordan

- Zorgamazoo ~ Robert Paul Weston 

Oh and I almost forgot. Apparently there's also a movie adaptation of How I Live Now, and it's even worse than the book... It's rated R and it came out in 2013 as a Drama/Romance/Thriller, interesteing combination... lol And it stars Saoirse Ronan, who was in The Host and Brooklyn, so now I want to see the movie even though it's rated 6.5/10 on IMDB. Yes Saoirse (Pronounced: Se-r-sha, I think )

Oh and btw on Goodreads How I Live Now is rated 3.58/5 stars and it's main genres being young adult, dystopian, romance, fiction and war.

(Next month's book club book (August) is Hold Fast written by: Kevin Major.)

Thank you guys so much for reading my super long and ranty report (omg it took an hour to write this) (and yes report sounds too much like school work, but what can you do?) okay fine... /review on our July Teen Book Club meeting. Hope you enjoyed hearing and discussing all about How I Live Now. Make sure to check out my review if you haven't already. I'd also love to hear what you think and if you were left with any questions yourself comment below. :) 

- As Always <3 Kat