Sunday 22 December 2013

C'mon deliver the letter, the sooner, the better... Part 7 The Finale....

 Book number 25
"S" by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst.

OK..

I wanted to love this book... a book with letters and cards and postcards..I couldn't wait to read it.

I loved The Griffin and Sabine books and we have heaps of kids books with letters and extras, every time I find a book with "extras" I add it to our bookshelf.

"S" however left me confused and bewildered. I liked it but I didn't love it.
I'm sure I missed some things, I couldn't figure out when some characters entered the discussion in the margins, I still have no idea who some of them were or how Eric and Jen discovered them.

I enjoyed Eric and Jen's letters to each other the most. The "Ship of Theseus" story was a bit slow at the beginning, but the last few chapters were a lot better. I thought the end was a bit of a let down though.

("The "Ship of Theseus" also known as Theseus's paradox, is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox had been discussed by more ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato prior to Plutarch's writings; and more recently by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke." -John Locke?? hmm)

I'm sure I missed some things simply due to having a toddler and not being able to concentrate on the book fully. I wasn't sure if there were more secrets to hunt for or codes to break.
It's definitely the kind of book I'd like to buy to keep, to pick up again now and then and to re-read just Eric and Jen's notes in order.

Amazingly, while "googling", I found this quote from Abrams-
"Abrams: The idea came to me when I was at the airport. I saw a paperback novel sitting on a bench, and I went to pick it up. Inside, someone had written, in pen, “To whomever finds this book—please read it, take it somewhere, and leave it for someone else to find it.” It made me smile, this optimistic, romantic idea that you could leave a book with a message for someone. It reminded me of being in college, and seeing the notes that people would leave in the margins of the books they’d checked out of the library.
And then, I started to think: what if there were a very cool book that was completely annotated—just covered in marginalia and notes between two people? And—what if a conversation, or a relationship, began inside a book? That was the beginning of the process, maybe fifteen years ago."
THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN BECAUSE OF (what sounds like) A BOOKCROSSING BOOK!! That is awesome!


Maybe,like LOST, it was just supposed to leave me wondering...?


Some links that are useful-
http://sfiles22.blogspot.com.au/2013/...
In case any of the extras fall out, this list tells you where to put them back (or you could just take them all out and put them back later)

And I found this blog great for laying it all out in simple terms-
http://maebookblog.blogspot.com.au/20... (HERE BE SPOILERS!!)



I read this as my 25th (and last) Book for the 2013 Postal Reading Challenge- http://indextrious.blogspot.com.au/20...
and as part of a Bookcrossing bookring.