Next pick:

A Medieval mystery (about monks!) for winter. Shall we start on Feb. 18?

Corrigan

What did you think of Corrigan and his religious convictions/charitable quests? He never moralized to the people he was "working" with. He never really encouraged them to seek a different life. He just offered them various small comforts and a place to use the bathroom and helped them with various errands (like appearing at court dates). Most importantly, I guess, he offered them the feeling that someone cared about them and didn't judge them, the comfort that they had somewhere to go, someone to turn to. His religious charity seemed to consist in asking himself, "What might this person really need right now to feel connected to humanity?" And the answer would be not a lecture, but a hot cup of coffee, or, in the elderly, racist curmudgeon's case, a tryst with the hookers.

And then there's his relationship with the immigrant mother — a chance for love and connection for himself. Why was it hard for him to give into that? Did he think it would detract from his "mission"? That it would make him selfishly concerned with his own happiness?

Man on wire

What did you think of the narrative hook of the tightrope walker? What did it add to the stories? Was it metaphorical?

Narrators

Did you have a particular favorite narrator? Were there any you thought didn't particularly work?

Why do you think most chapters were in first person but some weren't?

"Let the Great World Spin"

Thoughts? First impressions?

What did you think of the writing? What did you think of the narrative style of switching perspectives every chapter?

Steps Through The Mist

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry to start posting so late here. Hope you enjoyed your holidays, if you've had them yet.

First impressions on "Steps": What did you think? Did it meet, exceed, fall below your expectations? Did it read like a fantasy? (I think I harbor back to days when fantasies included dragons or hobbits or whatnot. This was more like quality literature to me.)

I found myself eager to jump into each "dream" sequence and was surprised by how quickly the stories unfolded.

How did the dream premise work for you as a paranormal element?

Next pick

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann

Here's an excerpt from the Amazon review:

Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.

'Soldiers are dreamers'

And not to bore with you passages from other books, but I also found this passage at the beginning of O'Brien's war memoir very moving.

Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are dreamers, drill sergeants are boors, some men thought the war was proper and others didn't and most didn't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

The first paragraph as a summary of the war experience is just amazing ("most didn't care"). But the question in the second, "Do dreams offer lessons?", seems to foreshadow the format of "Cacciato," how it's one big daydream in a way. So, do you have any thoughts on how Paul Berlin's dream offers a lesson?

Courage

I really loved this passage from "If I die in a Combat Zone." It's about how true courage can't exist without other qualities. I think it informs some of the scenes in "Cacciato," scenes where apparent cowardice might more properly be interpreted as courage.

For courage, according to Plato, is one of the four parts of virtue. It is there with temperance, justice and wisdom, and all parts are necessary to make a sublime human being. In fact, Plato says, men without courage are men without temperance, justice or wisdom, just as without wisdom men are not truly courageous. Men must know what they do is courageous, they must know it is right, and that kind of knowledge is wisdom and nothing else. Which is why I know few brave men. Either they are stupid and do not know what is right. Or they know what is right and cannot bring themselves to do it. Or they know what is right and do it, but do not feel and understand the fear that must be overcome.

The girl

Any thoughts on Sarkin Aung Wan and her determination to play house in Paris with Paul Berlin?

Best and worst

What was your favorite aspect of the book? And least favorite?

My favorite: I loved the notion of traveling overland from Vietnam to Paris and the descriptions of the places they saw: Mandalay, India, Tehran, Greece, etc. And I admired the depiction of the war-without-a-front as a psychological battle that occurred in each man's head. I also found the events leading up to Lt. Martin's murder eerie and awe-inspiring.

My least favorite: Maybe this is a comment on my own comprehension rather than the author's skill, but I found many of the characters hard to picture and hard to distinguish one from the other. Even Paul Berlin. I didn't feel I had a great grasp on who he actually was. (I did like the portraits of the two lieutenants: the strict, by the book Lt. Martin and the more realistic, more humane Lt. Corson, who fell in love in India and wanted to stay).

Vietnam

One of the things I really like about Tim O'Brien's books about Vietnam is how they give you a visceral sense of being there — feeling what the physical landscape is like, the terrible heat, the dampness, the insects, the rice paddies, the mountains and villages and land-mined trails; and the psychological landscape, the constant fear and exhaustion and homesickness.

Do you think he did a good job with this? (I actually have a stronger sense of these things in his other books, but I'm curious what you think having just read "Cacciato").

What did you think?

I found this book challenging at first because the characters seemed kind of a blur to me and trying to sort out what was real and what was imagined was rather tiring. But I enjoyed the book more as it went on, maybe because at some point I was able to conclude that it's ALL fiction or, conversely, that it's ALL truth, and I was more comfortable just being carried along by the narrative.

Kim's pick

For early November?

WTF?

What was the deal with Madam and Miss Emily, shacking up together in that weird house with some big Nigerian servant dude and who knows who else? I feel like there's some code to understanding and appreciating this book that has completely eluded me.

If I were some British writer wanting to explore how the government has taken charge of an individual's body to make it conform to its plan, I'd write about this amazing man.

Emotion

The narration of "Never Let Me Go" seemed almost void of emotion, even when describing the deaths of close friends and her own impending death. Did that lessen the emotional weight for you as a reader?

Ruth

Why do you think Kathy was friends with Ruth?

Science fiction

I've seen this book compared to "1984" and "Brave New World." Do you think the book is successful in its portrayal of a dystopia that clones individuals to be organ factories? Does it seem horrifying, or does it seem too unlikely to be taken seriously?

"Never Let Me Go"

Did you like it? Any general impressions? Do you think it deserves to be on TIME's list of top 100 novels?

Erin's pick

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro