The Call of the Wild book
discussion was very nice. Thanks, Lorraine, for hosting.
We started with some very good
food again! Veggies and dip, deviled eggs - delicious, lasagna soup and
bread, a great salad, gnocchi and some great desserts that included a black
forest trifle, cheesecake and cookies. Should have taken a picture. Enough
about food, but to be honest our book group meetings wouldn't be so great
without the great food, right? We try to bring our best.
The Call of the Wild was about
a dog and from his perspective. The biggest issue came from our dog training
expert Peggy Ann who has firsthand experience with dogs and was able to throw
some realistic light on the nature of dogs. Now, this seemed to be an unusual
circumstance in the book that one might not have with the average
domesticated dog.
The time is during the gold
rush of the Klondike and rustic travel in Alaska was sleds driven by dogs.
Buck, a domestic dog is snatched and sold from his first family in California to
be shipped to Alaska and violently broken to serve as a member of a dog sled
team. He goes through several very bad and some good human interactions until
the very last John Thornton who he seems to bond with and love.
The call of the wild
has some violent dog fights and develops his predatory survive instincts.
Our group had a good discussion
that included talking about dogs and the violence in the book and we seemed to
bring in current events to our discussion.
One of the
humorous moments involved the pronunciation of the word 'pianist'.
One word that needs to be pronounced correctly or you end up with something
completely inappropriate to the conversation. You can look up the pronunciation for
yourself since I like to keep this blog family friendly.
After the discussion we watched
the movie Call of the Wild that stared Harrison Ford. We shared several
comments on the artistic license of the movie maker. There was only a small
percentage of violence in the movie that was in the book. And of course,
another movie that is not true to the book either. So, if you didn’t finish reading
the book and watching that movie won’t ruin the book for you. Just don’t take
any tests on the book after watching that movie.
Our next book will be The
Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré.
Sharon
