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Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley

Another year, another book club anniversary (7th), another picture
: )

513B1ObmEKL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_4 Loved It
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Reading Group Guide

Comments:
• Powerful. I can see why this is such a classic. Everyone should read this. I especially enjoyed the beginning when Kunte was still happy in Africa. Alex Haley did an excellent job making all want the transoceanic crossing to end! Of course, I would have loved to know what happened to certain people, but I suppose the point was that those people didn’t get to say goodbye. – Marlo
• I am so glad that I read this book. My favorite part was the last chapter. All throughout the book I wondered how he was able to trace his roots back to Africa. Amazing! – Kerry
• Ditto to what Marlo wrote. – Carrie
• I did not like that they dropped story lines. Also, the book could have been cut by half. The whole cock fighting this was just boring. – Sarah
• I didn’t read it : ( – Steph
• This is my favorite book of all time. – Melissa
• I really enjoyed the majority of this book a lot. I could have done without so much detail regarding Chicken George and his story but other than that, I found it fascinating. The end gave me goose bumps once we find out how everything links up and allows him to tell the story of his “Roots”. – Danica

Conclusion: This is the second meeting we have had with the new way of handling talking about the books. It was a wonderful book for a discussion and although Melissa (who led this one) hates doing the questions, it did spark some nice conversation. We didn’t even decorate the tree because we spent more time discussing and exchanging gifts.

October 2008 – What We Didn’t Choose

We decided to continue with regular votes but was interested to see if last month’s vote was an anomaly. After agreeing that the regular vote would be the one we used to determine which book we will be reading, we did a passion vote to compare.

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The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
2 regular votes, 8 passion votes

slaughterhouse-five
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
1 regular votes, 4 passion votes

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If I Am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus
2 regular votes, 4 passion votes

Steph brought these in and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri was chosen as our book for February.

September 2008 – What We Didn’t Choose

We started a new experiment with voting. We voted with our usual one person, one vote as well as a passion vote where one person has three votes to put in any combination they see fit. Where we expected the two voting schemes to line up, they came back as completely opposite. We ended up having a run off vote on the two books that won the separate votes.

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Away by Amy Bloom
2 regular votes, 7 passion votes

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The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
3 regular votes, 6 passion votes

Tami brought these in and Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama was chosen as our book for January.

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