Finished this morning Spoiler My thoughts are similar to a few other people in here, it's a good enough read - a good idea, but parts of it felt like a slog to get through, and I never found myself rushing to read/listen to it. I'm glad it was part of the book club because I never would've chosen it - and it was worth the time, but not entirely my taste.
Just wrapped it up. Spoiler I'm glad Amie got waxed. Jack is a pretty miserable mad lad. Other than that I'd give it a solid 4/10. Also whomever picked the book, please do not take my Jack like rating to heart. Still enjoyed the exercise of the theory around the book. Just thought the middle could use a little work. It's like all the trope of TMB in one book.
Just caught up reading all your spoilers. Spoiler Enjoyed more than the book. Also, it's March first, what am I reading now?
https://www.the-mainboard.com/index.php?threads/march-2023-book-club-poll.184269/ Looks like The Passenger will win, I plan on starting it today - even if it ends up not winning looks like one I may enjoy.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit. The characters could have been flushed out a bit more but the concepts they we’re facing were unique. Spoiler The Amy death definitely shocked me. I’d completely forgotten that she never looked at her string. Enjoyed the ideas of how governments and financial institutions would try to deal with this. My wife is an ER doc so some of the situations made for interesting conversations around the Huckleberry house. Also Made me realize how large of a lever the unknown duration of a life is on controlling people’s behavior. Religion/children may be the opiate of the masses but not knowing how long you live is likely the Xanax in that metaphor. At one point I would have given it 8 stars but one thing really ground me down. the fact that no short stringer ever deals with the fact that, for many, the string’s are actually the cause of death. The couple that were married and then read their strings. Sees the woman’s string is short and so they jump off a bridge and she dies. Hank (ER Doc) wouldn’t be at an a short stringer rally if there were no strings. Javi wouldn’t be left to die if there wasn’t a belief that he had a long string. There’s this feeling throughout the book which is then explicitly stated “that their loved ones lived to their appointed time.” My read is that these boxes were literally just records from the future. It isn’t that you were going to die one way or another it’s that you actually died in a certain way on a certain day. If that certain way doesn’t happen you don’t die. It’s not final destination after all. the focus on this “meant to happen” mantra made the characters seem simple. It also meant they ignored what I originally thought was going to be the theme of the book. That if you have a short string all you really know (unless you have a terminal illness) is that whatever decision you make was inevitably the wrong one. It’s impossible for you to not make the decision that killed you because this is simply the record of how your decisions killed you. This would be maddening. “Should I go out to today since I’m supposed to die this month? Whichever thing I choose it’s going to literally kill me.” Would have liked to seen one character struggling with that and another really railing against the god or the future record keeper that sent the strings back altering the direction and terminus of their life. 6 out of 10.
I stayed out of the thread until I was done with the book. Looks like we were supposed to spoiler thoughts but we’re into march now. Can we say the statute of limitations on living spoiler free is over after the month ends?
I’m fine with that, I think we used to do that and we’d mark where spoilers were going to end. I spoilered yours until we decide, figured a few more could weigh in.
I agree with your last point, I thought about it a good bit Spoiler When they were offering assisted suicides to short stringers at the end of their strings, literally everyone that chose that option was a short stringer because they chose assisted suicide. With that said, all they know is that the string accuracy rate is 100% so they’re going to die no matter what they choose, if they choose assisted suicide then they die because of that but if they don’t then they know that it isn’t the cause of their death and they will die by an unknown cause shortly. That thought would drive me crazy.
agreed. But if they weren’t the type to choose assisted suicide then they wouldn’t have a short string in the first place. If they chose to not look at their string they also wouldn’t have a short string. It just felt like that was such an interesting idea that the author, at least through the narrator, gave short shrift.
some thoughts, finished last night Spoiler Thought the premise was an interesting choice, can easily see the similarities to covid. Personally wasn't bothered by not knowing the backstory on the strings/why and how they were delivered, didn't really seem essential to the story she was trying to tell. I thought the plot was a little too neat and tidy, too much serendipity maybe (though perhaps necessary for resolution). Could have also done with a bit more heft to some characters, some of them weren't fully fleshed out IMO and some of the dialogue suffered for that. The author would benefit I think from not hand-holding the reader quite as much. She has some resistance lib to her worldview, especially seeing too much salience in things like twitter hashtags leading to worldwide protests. Anyway, I enjoyed reading it, definitely outside of what I typically digest. Good choice for a group discussion. 6/10 for me.
Finished it last weekend 7.5/10 Spoiler Once you got to the point of the strings being delivered and their meaning, the punchline was immediately apparent: "it's about what you do with your time that matters" So really, the matter of how you got to that point was what made the book. I wasn't bothered by the lack of explanation on how they arrived, thought I do attribute the global event that no one would take credit for to the same power that delivered the boxes. I liked Nina and her girlfriend/wife's story for the first half and lost interest in the second half. Amie and Ben's story was pretty good throughout. We remembered that Amie never opened her box so when she and Ben died together, it wasn't particularly surprising. I wanted Jack's story to spike a little more, I think. I wanted him to headbutt his uncle in the face when he grabbed him off-stage. If you're going to be disowned by your family, go out with a bang. The fact his and Javi's story kind of flatlined(no pun intended) toward the end fell a little flat. I did appreciate that the uncle ended up disgraced by the college guy's sister in the end. I couldn't stop picturing a more southern version of DeSantis throughout the book so he was easy to hate. Overall, I waiver on whether or not I liked the Crash-like congealing of stories throughout the book. It gets to a point where it loses its appeal and just becomes a side story of itself. The book club aspect of the story really comes from the discussion of fate and predetermined time on earth. It's been touched on a few times itt but do you have a short string because you saw your string and it affected your actions in the future(in Hank's case, for instance) or were you just always destined to be that person? The time of Amie's death was based solely on her choice to give Ben a chance and end up in a life with him...or do we assume that she'd have died somewhere else, in some other way, at that exact time, if she'd chosen to live without Ben? I think your opinion on those questions really says a lot about your own upbringing and beliefs in life/religion/faith.