Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion

Don't forget to use the spoiler tags! :)

I'm having a weird brainfog on this one. Seems to me I read it back about ten years ago, but I'm not remembering anything about it, which is ironic given the whole "jump around in time" thing.

I read it when I was nine or ten, which was [mumble] years ago, and I'm really curious what I'll remember.

Just wrote: "I read it when I was nine or ten, which was [mumble] years ago, and I'm really curious what I'll remember."

I'm sorry, I couldn't get what you said, all I heard was
which was [mumble] years ago could you say that again, how many years ago? 😜

I have never read it. The first time I heard about this book was because Junot Diaz mentioned it on an interview, and I thought it sounded like something I would enjoy and added it to my "mental to-read list".

I started it yesterday and I like it so far. I'm only on the third chapter but it seems interesting already.

"It was a dark and stormy night."

Mary wrote: ""It was a dark and stormy night.""

I think it was still allowed then 🤣🤣🤣

Ha, I think it was meant to be ironic even then. English has been making fun of that one since the 1830s.

could you say that again, how many years ago?
Somewhere between 10 and 100, I'm sure.

It was, at least, an allusion.

Ah, OK. I remember reading this now. I might have been confusing/conflating (conflusing?) it with something else that I'd picked up about a decade ago for one of those after school reading program things I was conducting with some kids. In reality, I think I only read it as a child as part of a book club I was participating in at the local library.

There were a couple of images/phrases that rung a chord in my memory. The image of Charles Wallace in the kitchen, his feet dangling, for instance, jogged a memory. The comment from the same character about Meg not liking the warmed milk getting a skin on it did as well. L'Engle has an interesting talent for painting a picture with just a few almost terse sentences.

I'm confident the "dark and stormy" beginning was a joke on her part. There are a few tropey bits in the opening. "Oh, why must everything bad happen to me!" Meg is an almost painfully stereotypical character for the first several paragraphs. That seems to abate somewhat quickly as soon as Charles gets introduced.

It seems to me that I read a couple of others in the series, though again my memory is weirdly spotty.

I finished it this afternoon. I thought it was fun and liked it. I'm sure I would have loved it if I had read it when I was a kid, but either way I think it was a very cool story.

I was surprised when they were talking about the different dimensions, it was a very nice surprise to see that in a children's book. Not like I have read many children's books recently, but I don't remember reading one with a tiny math/physics lesson inside.

I'm very nearly done. Should finish up this evening or so.

I do remember reading this one back in the day, and it's interesting which bits remained in my mind and which didn't. I didn't remember it being as religious as it is, for instance. The hyper-Orwellian world of Camazotz all came back to me as soon as the kid who couldn't bounce his ball in sequence appeared. I had NO memory of Aunt Beast and that planet whatsoever, so that all seemed new. I didn't get the coven references of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which that first time around even though they are pretty professedly explicit. (I blame my lack of exposure to Shakespeare as a child.)

Apparently, the book has been adapted twice, once for TV and just this year in film, both of which I somehow missed completely.

I really enjoyed Aunt Beast. I haven't seen the movie adaptation, but I understand that Aunt Beast isn't in it? Which I think is a pity, because the concepts around 'other' are quite profound.

I am curious about the adaptions. This read as very apt for a film to me. Certain things would probably need to change even in a 21st century version. I don't think, for instance, that even if they kept it in the 60s that the scene with computers punching cards or whatever it was on Camazotz would fly for modern audiences. It's funny in that context that "IT" as a villain has a "Information Technology" analogy/metaphor that I don't think was L'Engle's plan. She was just going for something neutral and de-humanized.

The kids are kind of pre-hippie formal with Meg always saying "father" and Calvin saying "sir" to him a lot. A lot of that dialogue might need to be shifted around, though I guess they could pull it off depending on how they went about it.