"Ship of Theseus" by J.J. Abrams (BR)

[Soo]

Buddy Read Round 2 Starts: April 24th, 2019

Ship of Theseus by J.J. Abrams & Doug Dorst

One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.

The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.

The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

S., conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.

Hi! I've had this book for a while and happy to have a chance to read it with others. Ship of Theseus is an interactive novel. A story within a story. There's a mystery to solve and you get to be a part of how that unfolds.

The plan is to start the book on December 12th, 2018. Read at your own pace and feel free to post your thoughts here.

Please be thoughtful and put spoilers in a spoiler tag.

I look forward to reading and chatting with everyone. =D

Links to Story Lists Compiled by Buddy Readers

- Chapter Titles

- Character Guide by Iain

- "S" Symbol Sightings

[Sarah]

I hope it’s okay that I chime in here- I would recommend that you all agree on the way you want to read it prior to starting. Some people suggest reading only Ship of Theseus first and then going back and reading the notes in their color coded order along with clues. I read it all at the same time.

I only mention it because if some of you read only Ship of Theseus first and some read SoT and the notes you might inadvertently spoil each other if you are listing only page numbers.

[Mareike]

Oh, that's a good point to raise, Sarah! Thank you.

I think I'd be in favor of reading it all at the same time.

[Soo]

I also plan on reading it all. =D

Good tip, Sarah.

[Grant]

Great point! I’ll be testing out different methods to see which works best for me and seems to make the most sense.

[Dawn F]

This is the first time I’ll be reading a novel constructed like this, but comparing how I read the Arkham Asylum comic with annotated notes, sketches and symbolisms in the back by going back and forth each page to get all references immediately, I’ll opt for reading the notes simultaneously too.

[Soo]

I know some of us needs to buy the book. I figure we have plenty of time. I already have it.

Post here when you get the book.

Grant, for discussions, it will probably make more sense if you try to read the whole as we go along.

House of Leaves was another book that required going back and forth in the book but in a different manner than this one. I was only able to read that one to the end because of my friends. We helped each other stay on track. I figure I will enjoy this one more. I hope!

[Pat the Book Goblin]

I got the book. Looking forward to it!

[Soo]

Hi, ya'll! I'll be ready to roll and start on S. Ship of Theseus on the December 12th. =)

I just wanted to check in with everyone. I plan to take my time reading this one. I want to read the story + notes at the same time.

For talking about the book, I think using chapter or page numbers would work. I'm not trying to make people keep to a schedule for this one.

I plan on reading at a slower rate than normal but I can't say how long that would be for me to read this book. I'm in this Buddy Read to read the story and talk. I think it'll be cool to share ideas, peeves and etc.


ex:

Thoughts on page 42: (view spoiler)[This was an amazing example! =P (hide spoiler)]

[Anna]

I looked at the "instructions" on the book page, and it's making my head spin! I don't know if I could tackle something like this, how would it even work on Kindle, if there are color coded things that need to be read in order? I wasn't planning on reading it anyway, so it's fine, but it looks interesting and I hope you all have a great time with it!

[Sarah]

Anna I would think it would be just about unreadable in electronic format. I’m surprised they even made an ebook version.

[Soo]

For Kindle/ebook format, I would totally go & bookmark spots with notes or pictures of the items to know where to go for what. I've only read a few pages of the book and I like the two characters that write notes on the book & try to figure out the "mystery".

[Anna]

Sarah wrote: "Anna I would think it would be just about unreadable in electronic format. I’m surprised they even made an ebook version."

Maybe it's okay on a tablet, since there's color?

edit: Oh, there's an audiobook, too?!

[Soo]

Ya know, I may get the audiobook just to see how they do that. Now THAT has to be confusing!

[Soo]

I got the audio because I'm a curious dork. The audio does not contain any of the notes or the intro for the Ship of Theseus.

The book title is actually S. by JJ Abrams & Doug Dorst.

The title for the book within the story that we'll read and where the mystery is based is Ship of Theseus by V.M. Straka.

I love the setup for this book. I may love it more than the story we will end up reading. =)

I wouldn't be cool with writing in a library book but I love the idea of two strangers bonding over the love of a book and seeking out the answer to the mystery about the author.

[Mareike]

Can't wait to start this!
I looked at the preview for the e-book version, but since there was a note in there explaining how the reading experience couldn't quite be replicated in that format, I decided to get the "real" book.

[Timelord Iain]

Hello everyone... Soo invited me to join this group and this Buddy Read last night... I ordered the book, and it should arrive just in time for the BR to start...

I'm one of the people that read House of Leaves with Soo, last year... I hope this one is more fun than that was... there was some great stuff in House of Leaves, but it also dragged quite a bit... if the formatting is anything like House of Leaves, we just need to leave notes in the comments when we deviate from the page numbers (House of Leaves had a half dozen Appendices, and they became relevant at certain times in the story)...

I actually do 95% of my reading on audio, these days... and thought the Illuminae Files (an epistolary trilogy) turned out pretty great as an audiobook, but I figure a book like this is best experienced in Print, as it was intended, so that's how I'm reading it, as well...

[Soo]

Yay!

[Mareike]

Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hello everyone... Soo invited me to join this group and this Buddy Read last night... I ordered the book, and it should arrive just in time for the BR to start...

I'm one of the people that read [..."

Hey Iain! Good to meet you!

[Timelord Iain]

Mareike wrote: "Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hello everyone... Soo invited me to join this group and this Buddy Read last night... I ordered the book, and it should arrive just in time for the BR to start...

I'..."

Nice to meet you, too...

My book arrived in the mail, as expected... I know this is an experimental book, but it's not what I expected... I thought it was weird that the book came in a book sleeve, with a sticker/emblem keeping it closed, until I removed the sleeve, opened the book, and saw all the loose-leaf multimedia included inside... it'd be very easy to accidentally empty the book of these items, with no idea where they belong... assuming their location matters...

I see photos, postcards, etc... this should be interesting...

The "Book For Loan" stamp inside the front cover is a nice touch, too... for a second I thought "Wait, what?... I bought this..." LOL

After considering making a list of insert location, I found this helpful website: http://sfiles22.blogspot.com/2013/01/...

[Timelord Iain]

At the same time I was learning about that link above, I read a bit of an article on how to read the book...

Apparently, the audiobook is just Ship of Theseus, none of the marginalia & inserts... so that's out as an option, pretty much... and the ebook/iBook is useful for searching the Ship of Theseus text in conjunction with the story/mystery in the margins... and the EOTVOS found at the back of the book will make more sense once we've read the margins... the EOTVOS is the weird compass that seems to be a decypter-compass, found at the back of the book... I found it after my last comment, and it has me very intrigued...

[Soo]

=)

Yup! I have the audio and it's only Ship of Theseus. I figure it's a nice accompaniment to the actual book. I love the setup and design of the book with all the notes & inserts. It looks like a real library book that two people wrote all over.

I'll start tomorrow as planned.

[Timelord Iain]

Soo wrote: "=)

Yup! I have the audio and it's only Ship of Theseus. I figure it's a nice accompaniment to the actual book. I love the setup and design of the book with all the notes & inserts. It looks like ..."

I'm a "cheater"... it's 2am on December 12th, so I'm technically OK :)

Basically just read the Foreword & Translator's remarks... (view spoiler)[Between that, and the comments all over the publisher pages, it gives a nice intro to what this book is going to be like, I think... it's actually easier to read than I expected, just flipping through the book & seeing words everywhere...

Ink: To my best understanding, the timeline of scribbles is:

Faded (pencil?) (maybe as far back as high school, when the book was stolen) >> Blue/Black ink (first correspondence between Jen & Eric) (names from back cover of box) >> Orange/Green (only seen a couple times, probably overlaps with Blue/Black ink correspondence) >> Red/Purple (much later) >> Black/Black (very end?) (use of same ink/pen significant, they finally meet?)

That orange/green ink seems to have the most interesting tidbits, that don't make much sense at the moment...

CZECH = HRUBY: I thought this might be a reference to the EOTVOS, that I mentioned, since matching up the N/S circle with the E/W coordinates shows 5 letter/period combinations, but I didn't see HRUBY anywhere on the circle... still no clue what the EOTVOS is all about)

S: and now we have a mystery... who drew the stylized S?... so many questions, and I haven't even really started the book yet... this should be fun... (hide spoiler)]

Seems much less morbid/paranoid than the start of House of Leaves did... which had a stolen manuscript from a dead blind writer...

[Soo]

Alright! My official start of the BR.

Book Design
I love it! It looks just like a well used library book. If you open the back cover and look inside, there's a Library Return Dates.
(view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)]

Dates: October 6, 1957 to October 14, 2000

Title Page: I like the intro of Jen & Arrogant

Notes Colors: Right now, it looks like the initial notes by Jen were written in cursive blue ink and Arrogant responded in print black ink. Later notes are in Red, Purple & Black.

Jen is always in cursive & A writes in print.

I bet everything has a clue in this book. Like the Book list at the beginning of the book by V.M. Straka. I really love all of the geeky details designed into the book and story.

[Soo]

Writing

I like the distinct character & styles of the writing in the book. Like Jen and A already have a character & feel by the end of the Translator's Note & Forward.

F.X. Caldiera seems to have a devoted & paranoid bent.

p.10 (view spoiler)[A's real name is revealed! The other half of the note exchange is Eric Husch. (hide spoiler)]

Ch.1 What Begins, What Ends
Ship of Theseus starts off with evocative phrases & cynical scenes.

[Mareike]

Soo wrote: "Alright! My official start of the BR.

Book Design
I love it! It looks just like a well used library book. If you open the back cover and look inside, there's a Library Return Dates.
..."

I've only read parts of the Translator's note so far, but I'm enjoying it. I agree that Jen and A's characters are established quickly. Quite a feat.

I'm also assuming that everything is a clue.

[Timelord Iain]

18 pages into the numbered story... I'm going to continue to the end of Chapter 1 today, I think, around page 35... I'm making decent progress on this on my work breaks, taking some notes as I go...

I think, for people who haven't read to far, yet, it might be a good idea to go back and take notes on the "real world" characters mentioned in the Translator Notes & the marginalia... because I find myself flipping back already, to remember all the names Jen & A throw around... Summersby (pulp novelist that some believe might be VM Straka)... Desjardins (theorist with definite ideas about VM Straka, mentioned in the margins)... etc...

Speaking of notes, I've started writing little summaries of the content of the Ship of Theseus book, just because it's easy to lose track of the story when you're pausing every other sentence/paragraph to read the margins, which are almost longer than the story...

Anyway... the notes I wrote:

Page 5: (view spoiler)[sends you to page 10, then mentions a flood in the campus newspaper... that newspaper article is folded between the pages on page 32/33... I went looking for it because I saw it when I was flipping pages looking at inserts, before we started... I didn't actually read the article, since I didn't know if the other articles would be important... (hide spoiler)]

Page 7: (view spoiler)[Already seeing the seeds of all these conspiracy theories... this book is going to drive me crazy... (hide spoiler)]

Page 10: (view spoiler)[Wouldn't an organization called "The S" be easily confusable with The SS in 1920s to 1940s?

These orange/green text discussions offer so many tantalizing elements that don't mean much yet... and another example of why I need character guide:

Durand is that archaeologist-suffragist-novelist some thing might be VMS... (hide spoiler)]

Quick Summary of Story So Far (Pages 1-18... mostly for my own reference): (view spoiler)[Wet man with memory loss wandering New Orleans... has vague memories of a fall, and a note with a stylized S on it... heading to the docks, stops at a bar... passes a lofthouse lady, organ lender, brick-throwing kids & dock leader person along the way... now checking out publicly solitary woman reading at bar table... (hide spoiler)]

[Soo]

Jen writes in Cursive.
Eric writes in Print.

The colors matter because that dictates the potential "when" the notes were written but the type of writing they do is consistent throughout the whole book.

SO MANY CONSPIRACIES! =D

I've owned my book for a few years now. I think I need to write over the pencil notes with pencil because they're hard to read now.

*All Pencil notes are Eric's initial notes before Jen started writing in the book. They are all in Print.

[Timelord Iain]

"Character Guide"

"Real World People"

Jen: (view spoiler)[Late teens / early 20s, undergrad, Lit Major, recent breakup (Jacob), doesn't want to fallback into marketing job Dad lined up (hide spoiler)]
Eric: (view spoiler)[Husch, 28, grad student studying VMS(traka) & SoT (Ship of Theseus), expunged from school records for flooding Standefer Hall during Christmas Break... arrogant/condescending... stole SoT from Laguna Verde High School, in California, around 2001 (based on last library return stamp) (hide spoiler)]
Mystery Artist: (view spoiler)[Jen & Eric claim someone else wrote the stylized S on (pg xiii) (hide spoiler)]
Serin: (view spoiler)[Institure for Lit. Studies... (pg 15) starts financing Eric's research, based on a presentation he gave in Lisbon... (pg xii) financing auction of Havana crime scene photos... (hide spoiler)]
Moody: (view spoiler)[Eric's dissertation advisor... trying to steal his work for some reason... hunting for the ending VMS wrote (was lost in Havana murder, according to FXC)... hacked Eric's emails?... killed Eric's funding/grants... (hide spoiler)]
Esme Emerson Plum: (view spoiler)[Big NY editor that Moody was seen meeting with in library (hide spoiler)]
Ilsa Dirks: (view spoiler)[Teaching Assistant / grad student... working with Moody, it seems... found Eric in library after being expunged, reported to Moody... led to the book being left in stacks for Jen to find... (hide spoiler)]
Thomas Lyle Chadwick: (view spoiler)[grad student who's ID Eric found & used to continue accessing the campus library after being expunged... PSU ID# 3946608... geology major... (hide spoiler)]
FX Caldeira: (view spoiler)[Francisco / Filip Xabregas Caldeira... opinionated translator... possibly stupid/insane...Born in Brazil, moved to NYC 1924-1929... knows multiple languages... translator for Karst & Son... financed SoT himself when K&S abruptly shutdown... (hide spoiler)]
VM Straka: (view spoiler)[Mysterious writer... published 19 books, including this last one posthumously... seemingly murdered in Havana where he was meeting FXC... using name "S. Fortunus"... thrown out hotel window?... told people to burn correspondence after reading... (hide spoiler)]
Mr Grahn: (view spoiler)[Filmmaker, made Santana March movie, claimed VMS stalked the set and liked the movie, VMS disagreed and hated the movie... (hide spoiler)]
Bolton(1957): (view spoiler)[pg. vii, argues FXC's annotations suggest schizophrenia (hide spoiler)]
Desjardins(1982): (view spoiler)[page x, comments on VMS's fluency in multiple languages... theorized about the existence of a secret organization, called "The S" (hide spoiler)]
Hermes Bouchard: (view spoiler)[industrialist that Straka purportedly damaged... wanted him dead... declined award in 1912... sent monkey with a note, claiming Bouchard massacred strike workers and assassinated agitators... Bourchard's company dissolved after WWI and became reclusive... basis for Bad Guy in Wineblood's Mine (hide spoiler)]

Possible VMS Identities:

0) FX Caldeira, himself...
1) Vaclav Straka: (view spoiler)[Bohemian factory worker, born 1892, newspaper says he committed suicide in Prague in 1910... barely educated, heavily disputed... jumped/fell off bridge (murdered?) (hide spoiler)]
2) Torsten Ekstrom: (view spoiler)[Swedish children's author... across the street from hotel where alias "S. Fortunus" was used in 1931... fell of balcony to death... (hide spoiler)]
3) Guthrie MacInnes: (view spoiler)[Scottish philosopher, novelist, and bon vivant (hide spoiler)]
4) Victor Martin Summersby: (view spoiler)[initals VMS, American pulp novelist and screenwriter... there are tapes (confessions?)... fell off boat to death/drowning... (hide spoiler)]
5) CFJ Wallingford: (view spoiler)[Canadian adventurer (hide spoiler)]
6) Reinhold Feuerbach: (view spoiler)[German anarchist and polemicist... died from fall in home... (hide spoiler)]
7) Kajetan Hruby: (view spoiler)[Czech poet and playwright... FXC mentions translating SoT from Czech pre-Havana... (hide spoiler)]
8) Amarante Durand: (view spoiler)[French archaeologist, suffragist, novelist... if not VMS, they probably knew one another (according to Eric) based on details in Painted Caves book... shot by Franco troops near Madrid... possibly thrown from roof first, and shot to finish her off... (hide spoiler)]
9) Florence Stoneham-Smith // Floris of Bruges: (view spoiler)[little girl, and the 14th century nun she received messages from (hide spoiler)]
10) Grand Duchess Olga: (view spoiler)[writing before and after death... wikipedia: Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (born 1895, died 1918, following the Russian Revolution of 1917) (hide spoiler)]
11) Apis's Amanuensis: (view spoiler)[Serbian nationalist (hide spoiler)]
12) Juan Blas Covarrubias: (view spoiler)["Last Spanish Pirate"... FXC things he's fictional... (hide spoiler)]
13) The proverbial million monkeys (???)

Ship of Theseus Characters:

Main Character (S): (view spoiler)[Very few memories... sense-memory of falling from a great height. Black orb in pocket. Wet paper with stylized S symbol... lots of intuition, possibly based on lost memories... sees woman's face in puddle for a second... (hide spoiler)]

Sala?: (view spoiler)[ What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin... theory that SoT is a love story...

Probably going to edit this as I progress... might give each character extra spoiler tags as we learn more about them... this isn't even 100% for the first 20 pages, yet, I don't think... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain]

Soo wrote: "Jen writes in Cursive.
Eric writes in Print.

The colors matter because that dictates the potential "when" the notes were written but the type of writing they do is consistent throughout the whole..."

Yea... I noted the writing in my first post... including my expected timeline of colors, just from the Foreword margins... been consistently true so far...

And that was my thought on the pencil notes, as well... and I agree they're hard to read, even in a new copy...

[Timelord Iain]

I edited my character guide to be accurate through to page 18... it's much easier once I got past the Foreword, since I only really need to check the margins & footnotes...

I already caught some things I missed the first time (view spoiler)[Serin Institute is mentioned back in the Foreword, regarding funding the auction, but we don't learn about the name until page 12 of the story...

I also, in a few short pages forgot who/what Hruby was, and thought it had to do with the Eotvos cipher...

Then there's the significance of the list of people that died in falls... they're all people suspected of being Straka...6 people (VMS, Straka, Feuerbach, Ekstrom, Summersby, Durand) is a lot of coincidence... starts to give credence to the secret organization theory... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain]

Soo wrote: "Alright! My official start of the BR.

Book Design
I love it! It looks just like a well used library book. If you open the back cover and look inside, there's a Library Return Dates.

Dates: ..."

I missed this comment before... only saw your second one...

[Timelord Iain]

Soo wrote: "=)

Yup! I have the audio and it's only Ship of Theseus. I figure it's a nice accompaniment to the actual book. I love the setup and design of the book with all the notes & inserts. It looks like ..."

That's what one of my older coworkers said... he saw the Dewey Decimal sticker on the spine... I brought the book to work to read, and show a coworker I showed House of Leaves to...

[Timelord Iain]

Hope I'm not overwhelming people with my Notes / Resources... Soo will tell you, I kinda get into these things, when I get going... I took extensive notes when reading House of Leaves, altho that book didn't really need a character guide & story summary, since it was a pretty clear-cut story within a story, with a limited cast of characters that mattered...

[Soo]

House of Leaves had a core cast of 10-12 and a ton of other side characters. lol

I actually think that one was more intensive for writing notes & what not. It liked to play with the reader's perception in more ways than I think this one will.

This story will be fun because I'm pretty sure most of the clues are here in the book and maybe a little bit of internet sleuthing.

p. vi - Anyone else grinned at the Ernest Hemingway note? I did.

[Timelord Iain]

Soo wrote: "House of Leaves had a core cast of 10-12 and a ton of other side characters. lol

I actually think that one was more intensive for writing notes & what not. It liked to play with the reader's perce..."

House of Leaves mostly had the family, and the documentary crew, from what I remember... this has the story (light on characters), the university people (Jen, Eric, Moody, Ilsa, etc), and the list of people (possibly) connected to Straka... and the lines already feel like they're starting to blur a bit... got to page 22, with the next insert... (view spoiler)[which mentions a burned abbey and the Archer's Tales book... which is a nice discovery/reference, but then you see that one of the corroborating footnotes is the captain of the Imperia which is the name of the ship in Ship of Theseus... not to mention the fact the Archer's Tales book is also called Book of S... (hide spoiler)]

[Mareike]

Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hope I'm not overwhelming people with my Notes / Resources... Soo will tell you, I kinda get into these things, when I get going... I took extensive notes when reading House of Leaves, altho that b..."

I have the distinct feeling tat i'll be referring back to your list of characters a lot. So definitely not overwhelmed.

I also have to say part of me is upset at the thought of these two people (academics no less) scribbling all over a library book. How dare they!

I just got to the page where (view spoiler)[someone drew the letter S onto a page and our two correspondents realize that neither of them did it. At a time that seems to be late in their correspondence, based on the ink.) (hide spoiler)] Delightful and slightly creepy at the same time.

[Soo]

LoL I know. I definitely have to make myself not cringe about the book being scribbled on all over. Though, I take it that most people are used to highlighting & writing in books for school. Not me! I put my notes on in a notebook or write in a file on laptop.

[Mareike]

Soo wrote: "LoL I know. I definitely have to make myself not cringe about the book being scribbled on all over. Though, I take it that most people are used to highlighting & writing in books for school. Not me..."

Well, I underline/write things in books I own and that I work with/on. But always with a pencil. I would never write all over a library book, though.

[Timelord Iain]

Mareike wrote: "Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hope I'm not overwhelming people with my Notes / Resources... Soo will tell you, I kinda get into these things, when I get going... I took extensive notes when readin..."

I'll update with the rest of chapter 1 tomorrow... for now, I'll just say that things definitely ramp up by the end of chapter 1... both in the story, and the margins... (view spoiler)[the ship Imperia appears all over the place (hide spoiler)]

Agree about the writing in the book... they could have passed notes on paper inserted into the book... but that wouldn't have been as convenient to print...

While we're on the topic, these conversations must have been disjointed... we get to read a conversation in the margins of a single page, that required 5-6 passes of the book back and forth, probably over weeks, for Jen/Eric... they must be in the middle of dozens / 112 conversations (Eric does a tally on one of the pages about how many notes Jen has added to the book)

[Timelord Iain]

Mareike wrote: "Soo wrote: "LoL I know. I definitely have to make myself not cringe about the book being scribbled on all over. Though, I take it that most people are used to highlighting & writing in books for sc..."

The one important distinction, is that this was taken from a high school library 11-12 years before Jen started writing in it... once they start talking back and forth, I guess you can accept the writing... it's that first time on the title page... why would someone not just write on a piece of paper and say "I found your book"... I mean, all it had, at that point, was the pencil notes you admitted to doing yourself sometimes...

[Mareike]

Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Mareike wrote: "Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hope I'm not overwhelming people with my Notes / Resources... Soo will tell you, I kinda get into these things, when I get going... I took extensive n..."

I've been thinking about the disjointedness of their exchanges...it's so inconvenient but also kinda charming? And it's really fascinati g in places where you have early and late additions together. So much foreshadowing.
They're exchanges are both like letters, in a way, where you also have to deal with time-delay, and an interesting spin on the "conversations" that sometimes emerge in research papers by people in the same field. Just even more so because they're writing them into the book they're studying.
I'm really, really intrigued by this whole set-up and wish I had more time for reading tonight.

[Timelord Iain]

Mareike wrote: "Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Mareike wrote: "Timelord Iain (Eeyawn) wrote: "Hope I'm not overwhelming people with my Notes / Resources... Soo will tell you, I kinda get into these things, when I ..."

The foreshadowing, any time purple & orange comments appear, is some of the most exciting, I think, since you generally don't know what's going on, at those parts... makes you want to read more and find out :)

At the same time, reading in chunks, and being able to take breaks for a couple days in between, kinda lets me remove the feeling of this being like homework, as much extra effort as I put into books like this...

I'm gonna wait a bit to move on to chapter 2...

[Soo]

Agreed! Great foreshadowing and lots of clues everywhere. It's cool to note the change in topic or discussion is done well enough that you can tell different conversation threads. =D

[Timelord Iain]

The only thing that slightly takes me out of the story, is the margin space... have you ever seen a book waste so much page space (when you think about the fact that 99.99% of all copies don't have college students writing all over them)...

On the other hand, the book is like the ultimate Buddy Read... they have something to say on EVERY page... altho it doesn't always have anything to do with the story on the page...

[Soo]

LOL yeah the margins are huge! I'll overlook it since it's the only way we would get all the "notes" passed between Jen & Eric.

Did ya'll notice on the book case that there are birds on the top and spine of the case? I think they are sparrows.

Pix of Case & Sticker/Stamp on Case
(view spoiler)[



(hide spoiler)]

"What begins at the water shall end there."
"And what ends there shall once more begin."

[Mareike]

Soo wrote: "LOL yeah the margins are huge! I'll overlook it since it's the only way we would get all the "notes" passed between Jen & Eric.

Did ya'll notice on the book case that there are birds on the top a..."

The margin space is huge. But there's really no other way to do it.

I hadn't noticed the birds, but I was thinking earlier that the pattern surrounding the ship on the front cover looks like a maelstorm. Or a rose.

I keep wanting to pick up a pencil and highlight stuff or make notations. *facepalm*

[Soo]

LOL - It's a bit insidious. LOL

I am going to end up going over the print notes by Eric with something though cause it's really faded now.

[Mareike]

I finished Ch. 2 yesterday and started Ch. 3 and one question that I keep returning to is: how much do we trust Eric? Or Jen, for that matter? Though I'm mostly wondering about Eric. (view spoiler)[He seems a tad paranoid, especially re: Moody. And I'm not saying that older academics stealing their grad student's work doesn't happen. It does. I'm just saying we're only getting glimpses at Eric's side of the story... (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain]

Eric's reclusiveness mirrors VMStraka's...

I'm near the end of chapter 2, as well... despite what I said above, I haven't been able to put this down when I have a spare moment (work breaks)... bit behind on notetaking tho... luckily that's become less important...