{"id":1768,"date":"2013-12-02T01:24:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T01:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2014-02-07T01:29:10","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T01:29:10","slug":"roadside-picnic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1768","title":{"rendered":"Roadside Picnic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roadside Picnic<\/em> by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky<\/h2>\n

Twelve people attended the meeting tonight at the North Village library. Of those, ten started the book, while seven finished the book. Two people had read the author before, one person had met the author, one had seen the movie made from this book and one had played the video game. \u00a0Two people read the book electronically.<\/p>\n

In Roadside\u00a0Picnic<\/em> alien beings stop by Earth while traveling. They have a long picnic\u00a0then take off again, but leave behind their trash, which causes extreme complications for earthlings. The trash turns out to be\u00a0technology that is “advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic,” one group member commented. Not understood by humans, this “magic” creates multiple problems, reminding one reader of “themes from The Gods Must be Crazy<\/em>” movie.<\/p>\n

Opinions about the book were mixed. Those who liked it felt that it was smartly written,\u00a0 more “literary” than some books we have read.\u00a0 Someone commented that they liked that the authors did not “lead the reader around by the nose.”\u00a0 Several people liked the ambiguities of the story.<\/p>\n

Some readers did not enjoy the book quite as much, though no one seemed to think that it was poorly written.\u00a0 People noted that there was not a strong plot, that it felt “episodic”, as if it was\u00a0more of a “compilation of vignettes” than a “cohesive story. This bothered several group members though others thought this was fine as the story was strong.\u00a0 Several group members commented about the unusual structure of the end of the book.\u00a0 Some people felt it worked quite well, but others were disappointed.\u00a0Everyone was in agreement that\u00a0this was not a feel good novel and cautioned against reading it while in a vulnerable state.<\/p>\n

Additionally,\u00a0the translation read\u00a0seemed to make a difference in the reader’s enjoyment of the book. People who read a recent translation felt the prose was good and appreciated that it included “idiomatic language.” Those who read an earlier version felt that it was most likely not as “poetic” as the original work.<\/p>\n

There was a discussion about Russian politics and censorship at the time this book was originally released.\u00a0 Some group members felt it was possible that some elements to the story, especially the ending, might have been affected by what the authors had to do to \u00a0get the book past the censors.<\/p>\n

After the meeting several of us went out to dinner at Elevation Burger.<\/p>\n

— Carol Campbell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Twelve people attended the meeting tonight at the North Village library. Of those, ten started the book, while seven finished the book. Two people had read the author before, one person had met the author, one had seen the movie made from this book and one had played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1853,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}