Alex and Katherine's Book Talk

Alex: “So what book did you read?”

Katherine: “I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It was about a woman, Juliet, who is looking for her next topic for her book right after World War Two. She’s on her current book tour in Europe. Sydney is her publisher and Juliet and Sidney exchange a lot of letters. A man from Guernsey writes her a letter after reading Juliet’s book, and asks for recommendations of other similar novels. She ends up talking to him a lot about Guernsey during WW2. Eventually he convinces some of his friends from the Literary and Potato Peal Pie Society to write her also about their story. She starts to compile different letters and stories about Guernsey during the Nazi invasion and how they coped. What book did you read?”

Alex: “I read Money Ball, which is about the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000’s, and they were one of the poorest teams in baseball. They were trying to figure out how to win games as much as wealthy teams such as the Yankees because they could not afford to pay all the really good players. By hiring statistical analysts to look for patterns in baseball, they tried to figure out how games are won. They decided baseball was being done completely wrong, and looking at it in the wrong way to win games. So what did you like about your book?”

Katherine: “It’s opinionated. I enjoy getting different people’s opinions and views on what happened. I also think it’s interesting to learn about WW2 because I have family who fought there. What did you like in your book?”

Alex: “It’s inspirational to see how the underdog can win. I also like baseball so it’s interesting to see how a team really operates. So, what were the main differences between our books?”

Katherine: “It seems like some of the differences between our books is the time period, the use of epistolary form versus normal writing, and fiction instead of non-fiction.”

Alex: “Yeah and a similarity between our books is that they have a similar theme of overcoming obstacles.”

Alex: “I found it surprising that it’s not really a story and more of a collection of different analyses.”

Katherine: “I was surprised that it took so long to get to the main story. There were many random letters from different people about the lives of Juliet and Sydney before the actually story of what happened in Guernsey started.