I'm spending the weekend in a haze of FitzOsbornes. I blame you people.

Heh, yeah. The FitzOsbornes are so awesome.

I finished Code Name Verity a few days ago, and can't stop thinking about it. The characters felt so real to me, and their situation so agonizing. I'd love to discuss it with others who have read it. What did you all think of Anna Engel? Her last conversation with Maddie was difficult to read, knowing the part she played in capturing and torturing Verity. But she also helped her, and I wonder if some of the stuff Verity wrote about Engel mistreating her was fabricated for von Linden's benefit. I also wonder if she died in the explosion.

So many wonderful moments keep popping into my mind, like Maddie's rescue of the Jamaican rear gunner just before the explosion, and their conversation about the deaths of both of their best friends; and the line about Julie being buried in her great-aunt's garden (I'm tearing up thinking about it now). I did find it hard to get into at first -- I didn't know what to think of the novel's structure. I couldn't decide what I thought about Verity's confession. Not just whether or not she was collaborating and giving up real secrets, but whether or not the whole situation was fabricated, especially since so much of what she was writing was about Maddie, seemingly from Maddie's point of view. Would the Nazis really allow her to write so much that was useless to them, so many personal stories and conversations unrelated to the information they were trying to get? But I decided to give the novel time to reveal itself to me, and I'm so glad I did.

I'd have a very hard time arguing against Huck Finn, but the novel that first leapt to mind for me was The Catcher in the Rye. And then I remembered that I much preferred A Separate Peace as a coming-of-age novel, and think that Gatsby may be more iconic of America.

The structure of Code Name Verity was a little disconcerting at first, but it didn't take long for her voice, and the intensity of the character, to compel me.

I'd have to reread to talk about the first question you asked. I know had thoughts about it at the time, but I don't remember what they were.

Kate - I felt like it was very much a smokescreen (in response to the first question)

Grapes of Wrath. Huckleberry is a reasonable backup.

Author Robert Galbraith is actually J.K. Rowling link.

Kate, I feel like anything that pertains to Maddie is true. I believe that the Anna Engel stuff was all lies -- it was meant to be the diversion. Most of her account was a lie. Hence her "This is the truth! This is the truth!" and her telling the girl who refused to confess to just lie.

It's a perfect way to teach unreliable narrator, I think.

Has anyone read Armor, by John Steakley? I haven't read a book this fucking frustrating in a while. I'm almost annoyed that it actually redeemed itself in the end.

I do think class is as much an American focus as race, although race is clearly not a focus anywhere else.

Yet class in America is inextricably intertwined with money, more so (I think) than elsewhere. I'd also add a 3rd Great American Focus, religion, which also plays out in a way different than elsewhere.

I'll argue for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. It isn't on that list. But class/money determines almost the entire plot, with more than a passing discussion of the effect of religion.

Oh, and Moby Dick is overrated. The treatise on whaling breaks into the plot too deeply.