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The Gift of Stones - Jan 2020 - Book Group discussion thread

9 watchers
Jan 2020
11:08pm, 2 Jan 2020
42,782 posts
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McGoohan
'WTF are these?' I said on Christmas morning, emptying the contents of my festive stocking.
'Stones,' Dad said.
Jan 2020
10:18am, 3 Jan 2020
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Little Nemo
:-)
Jan 2020
12:41pm, 8 Jan 2020
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Diogenes
As the Choosinator, I am enjoying re-reading TGOS, a book I first read about 20 years ago when I was on something of a Crace splurge. I chose this rather than Continent because I felt it was more different, and not Being Dead or Continent because they are both better known.

My feeling is , even if you are not won over by the idea or the telling of it, you can't help but enjoy the writing.
Jan 2020
6:36am, 10 Jan 2020
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Diogenes
[The second ‘Continent’ in the previous post should be ‘Quarantine’.
Jan 2020
1:40pm, 11 Jan 2020
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Little Nemo
I liked the style of this book. Straightforwardly told but with a nice mix of poetic landscape descriptions and funny story-telling from the main character. I appreciate that the author didn't do anything odd with how people spoke!

I'm not sure how accurate it is as a description of how stone-age people lived but it mostly seemed plausible. Life seemed short and sometimes brutal but there was still room for stories and entertainment. I loved the idea that geese bring summer :-)

The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the speed that the bronze-age took over. I had always imagined that it would have been much more gradual, maybe over a generation or two.

I don't read much of this ancient historical genre but I enjoyed this and I'll look out for more of his books at the library.

I gave this book a 7.
Jan 2020
1:41pm, 11 Jan 2020
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Little Nemo
1st person to vote properly! *fist pump* :-B
Jan 2020
1:42pm, 11 Jan 2020
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Little Nemo
Damn! B-)
Jan 2020
3:53pm, 11 Jan 2020
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McGoohan
I think :-B would be a Bugs Bunny emoji
Jan 2020
6:56pm, 11 Jan 2020
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Little Nemo
=:-B
Jan 2020
8:25pm, 11 Jan 2020
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Diogenes
I finished my reread last night. It’s strange, I didn’t remember much about it from the first read and not much came back. I think I’d confused it with Continent which I read at the same time. But, as I’ve said before, I love Crace’s writing, and the story is simple but affecting in its telling. I like his imagining of how the different societies lived in sporadic isolation, how the horseman descended like geese then flew away again, how skills became outdated. C’est plus ça change.

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'WTF are these?' I said on Christmas morning, emptying the contents of my festive stocking...
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