The Book of Lost Things

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Dionysian imitatio, a literary method of imitation conceived as the practice of emulating, adaptating, reworking and enriching a source text by an earlier author. This reading group guide for The Book of Lost Things includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. The beginning of the story takes its time to develop, but this leisurely pace didn’t bother because Connolly does an amazing job with it. He keeps us engaged as he introduces us to the characters and slowly allows the fantasy elements to creep and and crawl and bleed into the narrative. This makes the transition from our world into the fantasy world feel authentic and seamless. In addition, the early events of the story turn out to be critical to the central plot and final resolution of the story and so form important threads in the overall tapestry. Trust me, after reading this book, the above image of a sadistic, powerful, child-slaughtering MOFO will forever displace your previous perception of old Rumpy being nothing more than a half pint, mischievous prankster with ethical deficiencies… We all have our routines," he said softly."But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.”

High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in the myths and fairy tales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds that the real world and his fantasy world have begun to meld. As war rages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both of a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world, composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves, woodsmen, knights, and castles and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious, legendary book, The Book of Lost Things. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, books had no real existence in our world. Like seeds in the beak of a bird waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. they lie dormant hoping for the chance to emerge.They want us to give them life.” Don't get me wrong, this book was perfectly alright; it is very readable and well-plotted. The characters and their relationships make sense, the world created is interesting, and the fairy tales are well integrated. I am still dissappointed because it could have been SO much better. New York Times bestselling author John Connolly's unique imagination takes readers through the end of innocence into adulthood and beyond in this dark and triumphantly creative novel of grief and loss, loyalty and love, and the redemptive power of stories.As a young boy, David lost his mother, and his only means of coping up with his grief was reading, an interest he got from her. The books started whispering to him and only he could hear them. Months after his beloved mother’s death, his father remarried. Rose, his father’s new love got pregnant with Georgie, David’s new half-brother. As a part of starting a new life with his step-mother and half-brother, David and his father moved out of their London home and into Rose’s which was located out of the city. There, in the old house, he was given a room that was used to be of a boy named Jonathan Tulvey. It was filled with old books that David tried to read for himself although some he could not understand thoroughly. The crooked man what a clever idea ! i guess this story is about him in a way, he is the weaver of the events and the world of the story, he's the mastermind . While Rose is nice and tries to form a bond with David, he finds himself increasingly angry at her and his new half-brother. He spends more and more time among the old books which begin to whisper to him and David starts to witness strange occurrences, including the appearance of a “crooked man” watching him.

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.” So I really recommend this one to those who enjoy fantasy and to those that appreciate the escapism that books can bring. Memento mori, a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die"... it names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. There is much evil in this story, the crooked man perhaps the most evil of all. What is most evil about the crooked man? What does he represent in the real world? Is the crooked man the most evil character in the book? Why or why not? The world that the author wrote into being was quite disturbing. It was stripped off of peace, innocence, and hope. In every corner of it lurked danger that a child like David, realistically, might not be able to endure. I don’t even think adults could come out alive of the situations David found himself in. There were beasts, creatures that could kill or mangle you. There was also a bit of sexual content implied in it that I was not expecting. It was not graphic, but it would be perturbing if a very young child would mistaken this as a children’s book and read it. He could either be very curious to try those things out or be afraid of them.So central to the novel is the importance of reading and the strong sense of escapism books can bring us. Whilst David, essentially, gets lost in his own world of books and ideas, it’s the act of reading that helped him come to terms with the loss of his mother. His adventure, enacted through stories and the characters he has read about, becomes a means for him to grow as a person and to learn about decency. Fairy tales are often moralistic, and David’s tale is no different. Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide-eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader." Connolly's "Book of Lost Things" came highly recommended as a modern take on the fantasy genre. What I found instead was a completely unlikeable main character, an array of interchangeable father figures, and a disappointing rehash of the usual fairy tale parodies.