A response - From Charlie to "All In"

(Thanks Charlie! For getting the discussion started! I moved it to it's own page to make it more visible. I'm about to lose battery, so I'll have to wait to actually comment, but I think you make some great points. Welcome to the discussion!)


This is Gerard's friend Charlie here, and I thought I'd break the ice on this one. I have to say that it took me a while to really get a hang on what was happening in this piece. The prose was very detailed and evoked a nice scene for me, but the back story (the world) is very important in science fiction, and it took me most of my time reading to really get a sense for what was going on.

As I still think I might be mistaken, let me throw my thoughts out there. Effectively, the main character is mortgaging his own life by stepping into this game. As in, if he loses, he'll be one of the people that they use to incubate this miracle cure (like the guy who is taken into the back room). Is that what everyone else got?

Since it took me almost my entire time reading to piece this all together, I guess the poker scene lacked a bit of the urgency that it acquired once I gained more of an understanding of the situation. Maybe that is intentional (I'd have to say it is, given the way the piece is structured). As it stood while reading, I thought it was a very accurate account of a high-stake poker game, which was fun to read. I just wonder if some of the tension in the piece is buried in the initial obscurity of the world's backstory, because we don't realize what's at stake until the hand has been played.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear what everyone else thought, and thanks for letting me participate in these discussions.

Content warnings - a Recommendation from Laura

(Content note: discussion of rape and violence in literature)

 

           Hey, so I was wondering if we should have a content warning / content note system in place for book club discussion? Especially since the group has expanded, it might be a good thing to keep in mind. Here's an example relevant to the book club context: I don't personally mind reading stories with rape scenes in them, but I do like fair warning, so that I can skim or skip if I'm not feeling up to reading it at the moment. A warning also gives any of us who might never feel up to reading a rape scene the opportunity to choose to sit this one out or not. This is a courtesy I've definitely come to appreciate.

Expanded example: I just read a great story where the rape was just DROPPED IN to the middle of a paragraph and I would definitely have appreciated some kind of heads up. So, if it were my turn to pick for book club and I chose that story, I would include in my blog entry, somewhere visible, "Content note: rape" or some such thing (like the parenthetical above).

       Or, if I were recommending this historical essay I've been considering about early American schools, I might include a (Content note: Descriptions of violence, corporal punishment), as a fair warning for anyone who wanted to put off reading about those things until they were feeling better, or just appreciated being mentally prepared to read about a lot of sixteen-year-olds getting beat up in various contexts.

The problem is figuring out when to include content notes & how specific to be -- but that can be a subject for discussion. It's fairly easy to do this on a common-sense, your-own-best-judgement basis and fine-tune it as we go.

 What do you think?