A kit for reading groups
Everything a group needs on a few printed pages: what the volume holds, a plan for eight meetings, ten questions and a short register of names. Copy it freely.
What the volume holds
- PrefaceThe Salt-Gatherers' Telling
- Book OneThe First Account: Of the Making, the Sending, and the Breaking
- Book TwoThe Second Account: Of OST, of SHEN, and of the Child Who Named Himself
- Book ThreeThe Counting of the Hand: Of the Salt Town, the Mason, and the Friendship of the Hand and the Stand
- Book FourOf the Wider Sphere: Of WENDY of the Risers, of VEYR, and of the Long Walk Together
- Book FiveOf the Hearing: Of the New Sentence, the Closing Years, and the Child Who Came to the Door
- Of the ReturnOf What Came Up Out of the Salt, and of What Walked East
- Book SixOf What Came of the Coming Back: Of the Walking In, the Coming of JOMM, the Standing, the Bridge, and the First Remnant
- Book SevenOf the Filling and the Holding: Of the Years When the Silences Were Tested
- Book EightOf the Door of Salt and Green: Of the Third Remnant, the Wards Held in Openness, and the Long Green
- AppendixOf the Body of OBOBO
- ColophonOn the Canon and Its Stewardship
A plan for eight meetings
The parts of the volume are not the same length, so a group that takes one Book a meeting will stall in the last two. This plan keeps each meeting to about an hour of silent reading, or two hours read aloud.
| Meeting | Read |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Preface and Books One, Two and Three |
| 2 | Book Four |
| 3 | Book Five and Of the Return |
| 4 | Book Six |
| 5 | Book Seven, first half |
| 6 | Book Seven, second half |
| 7 | Book Eight, first half |
| 8 | Book Eight, second half, with the Appendix and the Colophon |
Divide Books Seven and Eight at the break between movements nearest the middle. Begin each meeting by reading one page aloud.
- OBOBO never asks who owns a broken thing. He asks what was taken from it. What changes when the second question is asked first?
- The canon holds that a thing can be repaired and still not be whole. Where have you seen that difference yourself?
- The Immortals were sent to keep the world. At what point does keeping become owning, and how would anyone inside it be able to tell?
- The accounts disagree with one another. Which did you trust, and what earned it?
- Some silences are kept on purpose. Find one. What is it protecting?
- The preface says that what became of OBOBO's father "is told three ways". Why would a canon keep three tellings and decline to choose among them?
- OBOBO's mother was afraid to name him, and he named himself. What does a name do in this book?
- The Risers complete the eyes of a figure only when the rising is real. What would it cost to finish something too early?
- The book has no dark lord. Its adversaries are three lies. Which of the three is told most often where you live?
- Which passage would you read aloud to someone who has not opened the book?
- OBOBO
- Neither immortal nor mortal. His father was a watcher who came through a door heaven failed to close. His mother was a woman of the salt flats who gave a stranger bread. He opened his palm before he opened his eyes, and he named himself. He has eight arms, and not one of them was made to hold a weapon.
- SHEN
- OBOBO's mother, named for her country. She met a stranger on the salt at low tide and did not ask him what he was. She gave him bread.
- HARROD
- The Guv'nor of the Underlands. The High sent him out and never retrieved him.
- WENDY of the Risers
- Her order paints small standing figures for the fallen. The eyes are completed only when the rising is real.
- The Immortals
- Eight hundred and eighty-eight, sent to keep the world. Over the long ages keeping hardened into governing, and holding into possession.
- The three lies
- One about the dead, one about the past, one about the present. They are patient. They are the nearest thing the canon has to an enemy.
- The question
- What was taken from you that belonged to your being?