New Haven Independent

BNBC is back! Last week’s book club was good for my soul! The four teens and I had all read the book, and we all had something to say. It was a crazy book, so we had a lot to talk about. We ended up drawing a big timeline on the table and sketching out different parts of the book to make sense of it all. It was a great example of why your book reading experience is really not complete until you talk to someone about it!

Zeke, our official Sci-fi Aficionado, wrote about our experience with this month’s book (which I vowed to submit completely un-edited):

“So on Tuesdays (random Tuesdays, late in the month), my librarian friend, Sunnie, has this weird book club. One would think that no self-respecting sci-fi nerd such as I would attend a book club held by a crazy librarian, but I do. It’s actually pretty entertaining, and this month’s meeting was like the payoff for all the girliness inherent in a book club.

“See, this past month, the assigned book was Science Fiction! Joy of Joys, a book that would entertain! (though I am being melodramatic; none of the books thus far selected have failed to entertain). This book, The Last Universe by some dude blah blah, was like a teaser written by a physicist on drugs. A couple of kids delve into a family garden which, through some method of science, is a real-world implementation of the invisibly tiny oddities of quantum physics. In the course of their explorations, they discover a lethal thought experiment, a gardener with a penchant for poppies, and a maze that never ceases to amaze. (hurr hurr)

“Oh. Yeah, the maze. It’s actually the centerpiece of the story, because it is a ‘quantum maze.’ Upon entering, you cease to exist as a boring 100 percent probability being, and expand into a cloud of all your possible selves. Sound trippy? It is. What is even more tri—er, interesting — is that exiting the maze reduces that cloud back into a single you, though not necessarily the same you, and not even necessarily the same time.

“So what do you do when you enter the maze to find a probability where your dying brother is healthy, and then exit to find yourself in his position back before you even knew about the maze (aka before the book started!)? Why, you start the whole cycle again, and wish for the best!”

BNBC meets every last Tuesday of the month (get it straight Zeke!) at 4 p.m. at the main library branch on Elm Street. Next month we’ll be talking about (and sampling recipes from) Flavor of the Week. by Tucker Shaw. Let me know if you need more info: S.lovelace@nhfpl.org 946-8130 ext. 234