Great chat today everyone! Hope everyone’s excited to push on.
For our next installment, we’re going to read to page 200 by Wednesday, July 25th.
Note: We’ve added a handy drop-down menu to the front-end of our Tumblr, where you can select which of our posts you want to see based on what page you’re on in the book. Check it out!
Does Zoe remind anyone else of Lisbeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy? Even just a little bit. Because that’s how I keep imagining her. - herbackboneisaplum
I picked up the book right after it got released. I was walking through the grocery store and there it was. I remembered seeing that it was the chosen book for the book club so I bought it and started reading when I got home. Within a couple of days of reading here and there I made it to page 88 and still had a week and a half to wait for today. I set it down and picked up a different book for a different book club for a bit, but found myself gravitating toward Gold late at night. I finally said, “Fuck it,” and continued reading far past page 88 into the wee hours of the morning.
So far I am enjoying the book. I think it’s nice getting that human side of people we so often idolize and then discredit when they do something we don’t like or lose. I do find it a little slow at times, but then it picks up again before I decide to put it down.
I am interested to see where the story goes and how it ends. For those of you who were good and didn’t read past page 88, you are in for some good twists and turns and drama. - herbackboneisaplum
My intention was to read the first 25%, but I stayed up all night and finished the book. I have mixed feelings, which I can’t discuss yet, but it is a gripping read. Thanks, NWK book club! I had no interest in this book until you selected it for the book club.
I don’t know about you guys but I was pretty enthralled with that scene in the basement of the stadium, where Zoe is nervously waiting for the big steel door to open before she can enter the stadium and compete. Heart was racing. Fingers sweating (they do sweat!). So naturally (and, uh, spoiler…
Brian, I completely agree about the thrill of that scene and the complete predictability of it. That opening sequence, as Zoe is waiting to emerge from the changing room to compete in the biggest race of her life, is crying out to be filmed. No wonder it feels like we’ve all seen it in a movie—it’s written like a movie, complete with an intertitle (“August 24, 2004. Changing room, Olympic Velodrome, Athens, women’s sprint cycling Olympic gold medal race”) to start things off!
“Glad we’re in agreement,” Brian quietly exclaims from his desk while finishing off a bag of M&M’s. He looks over at Jimmy, who is sitting at his desk four multicolored rows across the newsroom, and nods.
I don’t know about you guys but I was pretty enthralled with that scene in the basement of the stadium, where Zoe is nervously waiting for the big steel door to open before she can enter the stadium and compete. Heart was racing. Fingers sweating (they do sweat!). So naturally (and, uh, spoiler alert) I gasped fairly loud on the subway ride into the city last week when her coach told her THE DOOR HAD BEEN UNLOCKED THE WHOLE TIME. Holy shit. He’s good. But also, kinda predictable? Like, isn’t that trick number 1 in every Olympic coach’s bag of gotcha’s? Didn’t Zoe watch Mighty Ducks? Feel like Emilio did that one. No matter. I was psyched. So can we talk about that door? As there was no true functioning locking mechanism, that bulky steel door separating Zoe from anxious human and the glory that awaits her represents, what, her fears? Or better, her belief in herself? Seems all she had to do was do a little believin’ in ol’ Zoe before that metallic gate of destiny would see her through. And I liked that. She knew she had it in her. She just had to get over whatever it was that needed gettin’ over before she could move along. We all have those doors, no? THE PHONE HAD THREE BARS THE WHOLE TIME. SEND HIM THE TEXT. Or maybe. THE PROMOTION WAS YOURS UNTIL YOU ASKED FOR IT. YOU JUST HAD TO GO FOR IT. Y’know, those doors. I’m with ya, Zoe. Glad that worked out for you, though I totally missed your race because of that godforsaken fuse box. - Brian Ries
OK guys. So it’s 3pm. Our plan on this here tumblr is for some of the nwk/beast editors involved in the book club to share their thoughts via submitted messages. You’ll see them coming through, published here on nwkbookclub. If you have a thought, or a question, that you’d like to add, just send us a message, reblog with a note, or submit your own post. If you don’t use tumblr and are viewing this on the front-end, you can leave a comment on the website (this post specifically), or tweet to @bookbeast. OK THEN. Let’s talk about GOLD.
All of us editors are submitting our thoughts and general questions to this Tumblr. We’ll start publishing them at 3 pm, but it’s not a chat unless you guys contribute as well. Feel free to start submitting now!
We’ve got our winner! Standby for the announcement. Coming later today. Any guesses? Hopes? Dreams? Let’s hear ‘em!
Chris Cleave, author of one of the five books up for votes right now (Gold), makes the case for his book.
