Million-Year Picnic)

Members Absent: None

Discussion Highlights/Plot Highlights:
Settlers on Mars follow how Earth is being destroyed by nuclear war. After leaving, the earth en cut off communication with Earth due to a feeling of guilt by leaving their homeland in the dust. Walter Gripp meets Genevieve Selsor, the last woman on Mars and spends time alone with her. This shows how all humans can’t live alone and need connections and companionship. Hathaway has a heart attack and passes away after first expedition Captain, Captain Wilder landed on Mars. Wilder discovered that his family is actually robots and not humans. Then we jump into a post nuclear war earth where an automated home is in operation despite humanity being gone. The Williams family goes to Mars and lives a new life. Mr. William’s says to his kids that they were going on vacation but are actually living there, once and for all. When books are burned the people burning them lol into water and see themselves as Martians, resembling how humans and Martians are the same. These humans are now referred to as Martians. 

2. We all engaged immensely in the agenda topics and really expressed what we thought. On the third agenda topic, I think that I really dove into whether I liked this book or not rather than the first book I read. I ended up agreeing that I liked the book for the most part.

3. Overall, I think that we all learned from our previous reflections and even our first trimester reading groups on how to read in ways that we maintain more important information so that our discussions flow better and so we can connect more. By doing this we were able to make deeper, more educational connections in our discussions which led to better answers to our agenda topics with more evidence and information to back up our answers. 

Musicians)

Members Absent: None

Discussion Highlights/Plot Highlights:
New colonizers which were called “settlers keep on immigrating more and more to Mars for various reasons. They begin to take ideas from earth like canals and sowing seeds and doing them on Mars, showing how they are slowly claiming Mars. Ben Driscoll, a settler, tries to get people to plant trees in order to provide oxygen. Even though the rockets may burn trees because they come and go so much, Mars would morph into a “shining orchard”. As the second part of colonization, builders began to come to Mars. A character named Tomás goes exploring on Mars and sees a Martian, but can’t talk to it because they speak different languages but eventually sort of learn what they are trying to say. The Martian picks up his language and introduces himself as Muhe Ca and says he is spending the night at an exciting city. Tomás says that city is dead but Muhe Ca says that they are in different contexts which are past and present. More immigration occurs, American settlers come in waves as the rest of the world is “burred in war or the thoughts of war” (Bradbury 115). This reading ends with young boys going to an abandoned Martian town.

2. All of us contributed heavily and were both on pace with where we needed to be reading wise. We also were able to make more discussion than we actually intended to do which is good. 

3. Even though we got a good amount of discussion in our meeting, we are going to try to be more coordinated in our discussion and form more thoughtful opinions on the book. Instead of just blurting out what we think.  

2. Going off of how we didn’t actually have a class to meet up and do this, everyone contributed well to what they were assigned to do today and so far everyone in the group is still intrigued in the novel.

3. The discussion went pretty smoothly and everyone seemed to comprehend the reading we assigned ourselves very well. We really discussed most of this in the second meeting due to us not having an actual first meeting and managed to also get all of the second meetings work done as well. 

2. This meeting was very well organized and a lot of things got done because of shared thoughts and both of us being around the same area of the book.

3. Awe greatly took our own advice from last meeting and discussion and reflection and while we were reading, remembered to try and take out more important and more plot points from the reading that would contribute to discussion.