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  • I can't wait to discuss this book next month. The brothers seemed very real. Real relationships not great ones, but not bad ones either.Questions, Quotes & Commentsp. 55 His [Elijah] thoughts turn to Cal, to his friends, to home. He wishes that time was a matter of choice. That you could live your l ... Continue

    I can't wait to discuss this book next month. The brothers seemed very real. Real relationships not great ones, but not bad ones either.Questions, Quotes & Commentsp. 55 His [Elijah] thoughts turn to Cal, to his friends, to home. He wishes that time was a matter of choice. That you could live your life controlling the metronome--speed it up sometimes, but mostly slow it down. Stay at the party for as long as you like. Prolong the coversation until everything is known. To feel such a longing for his own life, even as he's living it--he wonders what that means.-Too often I want to speed up life and not savor it or I feel like I have no control over the pace, so I can relate to Elijah.p. 62 A city presents many different faces, and it is up to the traveler to assemble the proper composite. Venice seems, at first, to be a simple enough city to render. It is the canals, the basilica, the shutters on the homes. It is the gondolier's call and the beat of the pigeon's wing and the church bell that chimes to mark the passing of an hour. To many people, this is all, and this is enough. A tourist does not want to be weighed down by realities, unless the realities are presented as monumental stories. It takes a traveler, not a tourist, to search for something deeper. Travelers want to find the wavelength on which they and the city connect.-I love the comparisson between the tourist and the traveler. I like to think I am a traveler, but most of the time I think I am the tourist.-Have you ever a visited a place where you connect with the place like a "traveler" described in this quote?p.68 One night, deep in December, Cal had asked: "Do you wonder why we wander?" The answer, Elijah now realizes, is: Discovery. In the age of guidebooks, websites, and radio waves, discovery has nearly become a lost feeling. If anything, it is now a matter of expectations to surpass--rarely a matter of unexpected wonderment. It is unusual to find a situation that appears without word, or a place that was not known to be on the road.-I can relate to this statement so much. I so often want to discover something on my own. Whether it be a really good book or a place I can call my own, however, I always want to have a plan that usually means research ahead of time and less discovery on my own and more experiencing what others had discovered first.p. 70 [more on discovery, after Elijah discovers the art museum]...Not because the experience will solely be his (really he wants Danny to see it). But instead because he knows deep in his heart that it would be foolish to return. Discovery cannot be revisited.p. 85 ...Elijah's problem, in Danny's mind, is that he has no sense of what it takes to make a living. Danny's problem, in Elijah's mind, is that he has no sense of what it takes to make a life.-Who do you relate to more? Who do you want to be more like? Why?p. 162 It's good to share a life--and it's good to share minutes and hours, too, Danny thinks. With a wife. With a husband. With a boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend. With a fling. With a brother.-I think this quote sums up the whole book and what Danny and Elijah's parents really wanted from them. They wanted their sons to share a life.p. 174 [Danny's thoughts] It is a dangerous thing with brothers, to think that you could be a s strong as them, or as wise as them, or as good as them. To believe that you could have been the same person, if only you hadn't gone a different way. To think that your parents raised you the same, and that your geneses combined the same, and that the rest of what hasppened is all you triump...or failure. This is why so many kids want to believe that thier siblings are adopted. So that the potential isn't the same. So that you can't look at your brother and say, I could have been like him, if only I tried. ...It is the goodness that grates. Even if it's mostly fake (Danny would like to believe, but doesn't really), Elijah has the gift of talking to people, of being liked by people, and Danny can't help but wonder why he didn't turn out the same way.-I definately think about this with my brother. Why wasn't I given the really smart genes or the self-discipline genes? Why can he do that and I can't?

    

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• ― SheReads said on Mar 5, 2007 | Add your feedback

Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it’s no wonder they can barely tolerate one another. So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? Soon, though, their parents’ perfect solution has become Danny and Elijah’s nightmare as they’re forced to spend countless hours together. But then Elijah meets Julia, and soon the brothers aren’t together nearly as much. And then Julia meets Danny and soon all three of them are in a mixed-up, turned-around, never-what-you-expect world of brothers, Italy, and love.

Are We There Yet? isn’t about a place on a map, it’s about a place in the heart. David Levithan has written a magical story of a journey definitely worth taking.

• ItalyYALSA BBYA 2006book clubbrothersrelationshipstravel2007 readfictionreadborrowed