Words for Wednesday: Tomorrow When the War Began and King Rat

As I mentioned before, we have started a book club in Maniwa.  The group is made up of about 9 foreign teachers and one Japanese friend of mine.  We are meeting once a month to select and discuss a book.  The point of the club is to get us to open our minds to books we might normally read as well as to let people share stuff that they are into.

The first selection, Tomorrow When the War Began, was not exactly the type of book I normally pick up but it was a good read.  It is a young adult novel, and that might discourage some from reading it, but apart from a few "love trianlges" I think it is can suffice for an adult reader.  It is just as interesting as The Hunger Games.

Anyway, the book takes place in Australia and is about a group of teens who go camping one week only to return to find that their hometown has been taken over by a foreign army (in the first book it is hinted at where the intruders are from, but we don't get any straight answers).  Their families are being held in a POW camp at some local fairgrounds.  The teens then have to decide whether they will surrender, fight, or go back to the campsite they have spent the past week at.

I saw a member from book club last weekend and he expressed how he loved the idea and wished it had been written with adult characters.  I think the characters are old enough in the book for it to be relatable, but I wish that we had gotten more specifics on why the invasion took place and where the invadors are from.  It is hard in this current reality for me to imagine anyone wanting to invade Australia.  Or, maybe more so, anyone having the strength and numbers to invade Australia.

I haven't read too many Aussie books and I enjoyed learning some new vocab as well as learning about farm country in that part of the world.  It actually reminded me a lot of home- especially with the fairgrounds since those are things we have in Iowa.

The book has been made into a movie but it has gotten bad reviews.  Still, I think it would be fun to watch.  There are also two sequels to the book and though I don't think I will get to them, I imagine they have the answers I felt were missing in the first book.

The second book we are reading for book club is King Rat.  It is written by James Clavell.  Though I have never read any of his other books, I am familiar with his work because he is quite popular among expats in Japan- especially the guys.  He wrote the novels Shogun, Gai-jin, and Tai-pan. 

King Rat takes place in a POW camp in Singapore run by the Japanese.  The characters are British, American, Aussie, Korean, and Japanese which is interesting since those are some of the nationalities represented in our group.  So far it is reading like a lot of other war books I have read (or POW books) and though it wouldn't have been my choice, it is interesting.

There are a LOT of characters and they aren't given too much detail so I am finding I am getting a little lost with who is who.  But I like the interaction between the nationalities.  I thought the book was going to focus generally on the brutality of the Japanese, but so far we have seen very little of that.  Instead, it seems to be westerners betraying westerners.  Though they are allies, there are a lot of tensions between the armies, which is an interesting aspect of the novel.  I had also never thought much of Australia's part in the war (I went through a WWII phase where I read a lot about the war in Europe and then the Japanese as well as China).

It takes a lot of concentration, but I recommend the book.  Although personally I am thinking Gai-jin would appeal to me more.  I must admit that I am only on page 140 of 479 pages of King Rat, so my mind could change.