Inkheart

This month’s meeting started with a surprise. Regina attempted to make single-serving smore brownies. And for the most part, they turned out wonderfully. But this was the first time she used the “broil” setting in the new, gas-powered oven. And as she pulled the top tray out, she discovered that the pies were on fire!

Mandy, being a supportive friend tried to comfort Regina by saying, “Oh it’s not that bad.” But then she lightly tapped one of the burnt pies, and it disintegrated. Which made everyone in the kitchen disintegrate with laughter as Mandy tried to communicate, “Ok, maybe it –is– that bad.”

Thankfully, the rest of the batch was fit for human consumption, and the smore brownies were a hit.

Moving on to Inkheart. We all thought it was a fun read. There are lots of fun characters, and it will be interesting to see how they interpret the book into a movie. (An outing is planned for tomorrow night.)

One of our discussion points for the evening was around language. Inkheart was written in German, and then translated to English. We wondered what may have been lost or gained in translation. We talked about how even with an English to English translation (ex. Harry Potter series), certain words or situations may be received differently by different readers. It was an interesting thought to toss around.

We later got distracted by superstitions. One of the main characters – Basta – is a deeply superstitious person. Christine shared that at a recent family gathering, the women in her family had fun with the pencil test. So of course, we scrambled to find a pencil, a needle, and some thread…and the night ended with more laughter.

Looking ahead, our next read is “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls (Kristin’s Pick). A few of us also plan on reading the rest of the Inkheart series. Thank you Erinn, for picking such an enjoyable book!