Call of the Wild

 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