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Read and Discuss: Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Start your year off right and join a book discussion group!Plailnsong
So Many Books, So Little Time Book Discussion Group
Always wanted to join a book group, but never made the time?  If you want to read well-crafted, contemporary, literary works and discuss them with interested readers, then this book group is for you!  Everyone is welcome and books are provided.

Mark your calendar
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Sunday, February 24, 3-5 pm, Menninger Room 206
Call 580-4540 to register, or e-mail us that you plan to attend.

(read more about the book and get a sneak peek at our discussion topics after the cut)

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Posted on February 02, 2008 by Deb at 10:34 AM | | Comments (0)

Read and Discuss: In Her Shoes

Start your year off right and join a book discussion group!
So Many Books, So Little Time Book Discussion Group
Always wanted to join a book group, but never made the time?  If you want to read well-crafted, contemporary, literary works and discuss them with interested readers, then this book group is for you!  Everyone is welcome and books are provided.

Mark your calendar
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
Sunday, January 27, 3-5 pm, Menninger Room 206
Call 580-4540 to register, or e-mail us that you plan to attend.

Check out the book (and the movie adaptation!)
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

In Her Shoes by Jennifer WeinerIn Her Shoes DVD

Continue reading "Read and Discuss: In Her Shoes" »

Posted on December 31, 2007 by Lissa at 10:27 AM | | Comments (0)

Read and Discuss: Madame Bovary

Start your year off right and join a book discussion group!
Literature with Lunch Book Discussion Group
Classics are more fun when you read them with friends!
Arrive early with your food and drink from the Millennium Café, or come at 1pm to enjoy a concise multimedia presentation on the background and cultural impact of a classic novel, followed by discussion of themes and characters.

Mark your calendar
Madame Bovary by Gustave FlaubertMadame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Monday, January 14, 1-2:30 pm, Marvin Auditorium 101A
Participants can read the book before participating in each discussion or just come to listen to a lively book group. Call 580-4540 to register, or e-mail us that you plan to attend.

Check out the book
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Continue reading "Read and Discuss: Madame Bovary" »

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Lissa at 12:15 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter, Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’s soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town – and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache and grace.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Empire Falls traces three very different families—the Whitings, the Robys, and the Mintys—through several generations. What do each of these families represent in the context of American society? How do their fates embody the economic and social changes that have occurred over the last century? To what extent are the members of the current generation trapped by the past?

What adjectives would you use to describe Empire Falls? How does Russo make the story of a dying town (with more than its share of losers) entertaining and engaging? Did you find most, if not all, of the characters sympathetic in some way?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 06:32 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong begins this spellbinding story of her spiritual journey with her departure in 1969 from the Roman Catholic convent she had entered seven years before—hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God. She knew almost nothing of the changed world to which she was returning, and she was tormented by panic attacks and inexplicable seizures.
Armstrong’s struggle against despair was further fueled by a string of discouragements—failed spirituality, doctorate, and jobs; fruitless dealings with psychiatrists. Finally, in 1976, she was diagnosed with epilepsy, given proper treatment, and released from her “private hell.” She then began the writing career that would become her true calling, and as she focused on the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, her own inner story began to emerge. Without realizing it, she had embarked on a spiritual quest, and through it she would eventually experience moments of transcendence—the profound fulfillment that she had not found in long hours of prayer as a young nun.
Powerfully engaging, often heartbreaking, but lit with bursts of humor, The Spiral Staircase is an extraordinary history of self.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
What is the irony of Armstrong’s sense of God’s presence in the midst of her epileptic seizure in the Baker Street subway station? Why did she consider the diagnosis of epilepsy “an occasion of pure happiness”?

How does Armstrong’s performance on the pilot for the BBC film The Body of Christ free her to speak her mind? Why, when she speaks about the ages-old anti-female bias of the Church, does she feel “elated”?

Armstrong’s study of Paul and his Jewish context is an intellectual breakthrough. How does her journey to Israel and the Middle East change her perspective on herself?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 06:21 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with the problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is that of a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witch doctors.
Description from book jacket.

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
What makes Precious Ramotswe such a charming protagonist? What kind of woman is she? How is she different from the usual detective?

Alexander McCall Smith has both taught and written about criminal law. In what ways does in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency draw upon this knowledge? How are lawyers and the police characterized in the novel?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 05:26 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss:The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy to the atrocities of the present.
Description from author website

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
The strong underlying force of this novel is the relationship between Amir and Hassan. Discuss their friendship. Why is Amir afraid to be Hassan's true friend? Why does Amir constantly test Hassan's loyalty? Why does he resent Hassan? After the kite running tournament, why does Amir no longer want to be Hassan's friend?

Amir and Hassan have a favorite story. Does the story have the same meaning for both men? Why does Hassan name his son after one of the characters in the story?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 05:09 PM | | Comments (1)

Discuss: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lawyer Atticus Finch defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic, Puliter Prize-winning novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white woman. Through the eyes of Atticus's children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unanswering honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930's.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Scout ages two years-from six to eight-over the course of Lee's novel, which is narrated from her perspective as an adult. Did you find the account her narrator provides believable? Were there incidents or observations in the book that seemed unusually "knowing" for such a young child? What event or episode in Scout's story do you feel truly captures her personality?

What elements of this book did you find especially memorable, humorous, or inspiring? Are there individual characters whose beliefs, acts, or motives especially impressed or surprised you? Did any events in this book cause you to reconsider your childhood memories or experiences in a new light?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 03:55 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother
by James McBride

James McBride grew up one of twelve siblings in the all-black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white. The object of McBride’s constant embarrassment and continuous fear for her safety, his mother was an inspiring figure, who through sheer force of will saw her dozen children through college, and many through graduate school. McBride was an adult before he discovered the truth about his mother: the daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi in rural Virginia, she had run away to Harlem, married a black man, and founded an all-black Baptist church in her living room in Red Hook. In her son’s remarkable memoir, she tells in her own words the story of her past. Around her narrative, James McBride has written a powerful portrait of growing up, a meditation on race and identity, and a poignant, beautifully crafted hymn from a son to his mother.         
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Discuss Ruth McBride's refusal to reveal her past and how that influenced her children's sense of themselves and their place in the world. How has your knowledge—or lack thereof—about your family background shaped your own self-image?

Do you think it was naïve of Ruth McBride Jordan to think that her love for her family and her faith in God would overcome all potential obstacles or did you find her faith in God's love and guidance inspiring?

Do you think it would be possible to achieve what Ruth McBride has achieved in today's society?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 03:12 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a Black woman in the ‘30’s.  Zora Neale Hurston’s classic 1937 novel follows Janie from her nanny’s plantation shack to Logan Killick’s farm, to all-Black Eatonville—where she gathers in “the great fish-net” of her life.  Janie’s quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
How does Janie's journey--from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades--represent her, and the novel's increasing immersion in black culture and traditions? What elements of individual action and communal life characterize that immersion?

Why is adherence to received tradition so important to nearly all the people in Janie's world? How does the community deal with those who are "different"?

What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston's characters watching? What is the nature of that God and of their watching? Do any of them question God?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 03:04 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton 
by Jane Smiley

Six years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three years after her witty, acclaimed, and best-selling novel of academe, Moo, Jane Smiley once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance.
Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom.
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question.
And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself.
Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best.
Description from book jacket.

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Why does Ms. Smiley choose to describe Lidie's adventures as "all-true" in the title of her novel? How would this work differ had the author chosen to turn her research into a narrative of nonfiction?

In what ways do the sensibilities of the abolitionists mirror those of the slave-holders? How does each group use religion and history to justify its perspective on slavery?

What can the reader of Lidie Newton discern about morality and violence? Are the K.T. Free Staters justified in pursuing freedom through violence? What are the antecedents and repercussions of this issue in America?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 03:04 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing.
Christopher decides that he will track down the real killer and turns to his favorite fictional character, the impeccably logical Sherlock Holmes, for inspiration. But the investigation leads him down some unexpected paths and ultimately brings him face to face with the dissolution of his parents' marriage. As he tries to deal with the crisis within his own family, we are drawn into the workings of Christopher’s mind.
And herein lies the key to the brilliance of Mark Haddon’s choice of narrator: The most wrenching of emotional moments are chronicled by a boy who cannot fathom emotion. The effect is dazzling, making for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing is a mind that perceives the world literally.
Description from book jacket.

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
One of the unusual aspects of the novel is its inclusion of many maps and diagrams. How effective are these in helping the reader see the world through Christopher's eyes?

Which scenes are comical in this novel, and why are they funny? Are these same situations also sad, or exasperating?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 02:48 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad.  That’s a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.  Along the way, he shatters myths and unearths a trove fascinating, unsettling truths—from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production and popular culture.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Since few people would confuse fast food with health food, who bears the greater responsibility for the alarming rate of obesity in children in the United States: the fast food chains that market "supersize" meals to children, or parents who are not educating their children about the benefits of a balanced diet?

Over the last several decades, fast food companies have aggressively targeted children in their marketing efforts. Should advertisers be permitted to target children who lack the sophistication to make informed decisions and are essentially being lured into eating high fat, high calorie food through toys and cute corporate mascots?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 02:43 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

The man at Charles Blakey’s door has a propositinon almost too strange for words. He wants to spend the summer in Charles’s basement, and Charles cannot even begin to guess why. The beautiful house has been in the Blakey family for generations, but Charles has just lost his job and is behind on his mortage payments. The money would be welcome. But Charles Blakey is black and Anniston Bennet is white, and it is clear that the stranger wants more than a basement view. There is something deeper and darker about his request, and Charles does not need any more trouble. But financial necessity leaves him no choice.
Once Anniston Bennet is installed in his basement, Charles is cast into a role he never dreamed of. Anniston has some very particular requests for his landlord, and try as he might, Charles cannot avoid being lured into Bennet’s strange world. At first he resists, but soon he is tempted—tempted by the opportunity to understand a set of codes that has always eluded him. Charles’s summer with a man in his basement turns into an exploration of inconceivable worlds of power and manipulation, and unimagined realms of humanity.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Bennet and Charles's relationship challenges historical roles based on the color of one's skin. Why do you think these very distinct men are drawn to each other? Describe the way in which each man perceives the other.

The struggle between good and evil is a key theme in the conversations between Bennet and Charles. Initially how does Charles define the two? Does his perception change?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 02:21 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

From the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie comes this long-awaited follow-up, an enchanting, beautifully crafted novel that explores a mystery only heaven can unfold. Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years—from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge—so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his—and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
One by one, Eddie’s five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.
Description from book jacket. 

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Describe what Albom's heaven is like. If it differs from what you imagined, share those differences.

Discuss what you might say to Eddie when he asks "why would heaven make you relive your own decay?".

What would you say to Eddie when he laments that he accomplished nothing with his life? Discuss what he has accomplished.

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 02:06 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The system was simple.  Everyone understood it.  Books were for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden.  Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires.  And he enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames… never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.  Then Guy met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think.  And Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do…
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Why do you think the firemen's rulebook credited Benjamin Franklin-- writer, publisher, political leader, inventor, ambassador--as being the first fireman?

Since the government is so opposed to readers, thinkers, walkers, and slow drivers, why does it allow the procession of men along the railroad tracks to exist?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 01:47 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
by Truman Capote

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces.  There was no apparent motive for the crime and there were almost no clues.  As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.  In Cold Blood, is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
How would you describe the relationship between Dick and Perry?

What does the crime reveal about the town of Holcomb? How does the gossip surrounding the murders reflect underlying truths about the town?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 01:45 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks

The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks

The Learning Tree brings us into the inner lives of a black family as they struggle to understand and accept—without malice—the bitter challenge of their special world.
Description from the book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:

Discuss Newt’s fear of death, and his novel way of overcoming it.

Newt is initially afraid to tell what he knows about the murder because he fears that revealing the information will result in race trouble. Why might he feel this way? How might the murder trial have ended had Booker Savage not committed suicide?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 01:40 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Empire Rising by Thomas Kelly

Empire Rising by Thomas Kelly

It is 1930 and ground has just been broken for the building dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World.  One of the thousands of men working high above the city is Michael Brody, an Irish immigrant torn between his desire to make a new life in America and his pledge to gather money and arms for the Irish republican cause.  When he meets Grace Masterson, an alluring artist who is depicting the great skyscraper’s rise from her houseboat on the East River, Brody’s life turns exhilarating and dangerous, for Grace is also a paramour of Johnny Farrell, Mayor Jimmy Walker’s liaison with Tammany Hall and the New York Underworld.
Description from book jacket
 
Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Does the title Empire Rising refer only to the construction of the Empire State Building, or does it mean something more? What are the ways in which it can be interpreted?

Is there a character in this novel who hasn’t succumbed to the vice of the city?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 01:20 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman

Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman

When her parents brought her from the war-ravaged, faded elegance of her native Cracow in 1959 to settle in well-manicured, suburban Vancouver, Eva Hoffman was thirteen years old. Entering into adolescence, she endured the painful pull of nostalgia and struggled to express herself in a strange, unyielding new language.
Her spiritual and intellectual odyssey continued in college and led her ultimately to New York’s literary world, yet still she felt caught between two languages, two cultures. But her perspective also made her a keen observer of an America in the flux of change.
A classically American chronicle of upward mobility and assimilation, Lost in Translation is also an incisive meditation on coming to terms with one’s own uniqueness, on learning how deeply culture affects the mind and body, and finally, on what it means to accomplish a translation of one’s self.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Historically, Poland can be seen alternatively as both a haven for Jews and as the scene of much persecution. Which is it to the heroine of the memoir, Eva Hoffman?

How does adopting the American view of happiness influence Eva to dissolve her marriage? To make career changes?

How is the decision to go into therapy a repudiation of the ways to deal with emotion that she learned as child growing up in Poland?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 01:04 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina – a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
Description from book jacket

 

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

 

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

 

Questions to get you started:
Lily grew up without her mother, but in the end she finds a house full of them. Have you ever had a mother figure in your life who wasn't your true mother? Have you ever had to leave home to find home?

 

What compelled Rosaleen to spit on the three men's shoes? What does it take for a person to stand up with conviction against brutalizing injustice? What did you like best about Rosaleen?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 12:04 PM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips and spreads like wildfire.
Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
Description from book jacket
 
Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. At what point does it become obvious that something has reached a boiling point and is about to tip?

What would you describe yourself as -- a connecter, maven or salesman? Think of the people you know and who out of them best exemplifies these categories and why.   

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 11:51 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics.  As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov.  In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading.  Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
On her first day teaching at the University of Tehran, Azar Nafisi began class with the questions, "What should fiction accomplish? Why should anyone read at all?" What are your own answers? How does fiction force us to question what we often take for granted?

Compare attitudes toward the veil held by men, women and the government in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nafisi teaches that the novel is a sensual experience of another world which appeals to the reader's capacity for compassion. Do you agree that "empathy is at the heart of the novel"? How has this book affected your understanding of the impact of the novel?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 11:37 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle

A car collision between two men represents the dividing line between America and Mexico and between rich and poor in this humorous and serious political novel.
 
Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
At the beginning of the story, Delaney accidentally hits Cándido with his car. "For a long moment, they stood there, examining each other, unwitting perpetrator and unwitting victim." How does this encounter set the tone for the events that follow? Does it come full circle in the final scene?

The author does not offer a solution to the problem of illegal immigration, for which he was praised by several reviewers. Do you think he should have offered a solution?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 11:22 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka

When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view—the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity—she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:

Why does Otsuka refer to her characters as “the woman,” “the girl,” “the boy,” and “the father,” rather than giving them names? How does this lack of specific identities affect the reader’s relationship to the characters?

What parallels does the novel reveal between the American treatment of citizens of Japanese descent and the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 10:47 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Leif Enger’s best-selling debut is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, and a love story, in which ‘what could be unbelievable becomes extraordinary” (Connie Ogle, The Miami Herald).  Enger brings us eleven year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy in the Midwest who has reason to believe in miracles.  Along with his sister and father, Reuben finds himself on a cross-country search for his outlaw older brother who has been controversially charged with murder.  Their journey unfolds like a revelation, and its conclusion shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Prayer is described in many ways, and on many occasions, in Peace Like a River. Reading this book, did you discover anything about the activity of, reasons for, or consequences of prayer? What larger points—about religion and human nature, say—might the author be making with his varied depictions of people at prayer?

Much of this novel concerns the inner life of childhood: imagination, storytelling, chores, play, and school life. Discuss the author's portrayal of childhood. Do the children depicted here seem realistic? Why or why not?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 10:23 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant. An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
Henry's life is disrupted on multiple levels by spontaneous time travel. How does his career as a librarian offset his tumultuous disappearances? Why does that job appeal to Henry?

Henry and Clare know each other for years before they fall in love as adults. How does Clare cope with the knowledge that at a young age she knows that Henry is the man she will eventually marry?

The Time Traveler's Wife is ultimately an enduring love story. What trials and tribulations do Henry and Clare face that are the same as or different from other "normal" relationships?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 10:12 AM | | Comments (0)

Discuss: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life. The result is a deeply moving novel that, through the prism of one family, illuminates the American present against the fascinating background of its past.
Description from book jacket

Book Group in a Bag Discussion Resources

Discuss the book -- character motivations, setting, writing style, themes and symbolism, the ending, the movie versions and more. Share your thoughts by posting your comments and questions below.

Questions to get you started:
How much of Susan Ward's destiny was determined by the era in which she lived and the limitations that era placed on a woman's freedom? Do you think of her as a woman ahead of her time?

Stegner's novels are known for their strong sense of place. What role does the terrain in the West play in Angle of Repose? Would you consider the land to be a 'character' in the novel? Can you describe this character in human terms?

Angle of Repose was written in 1971, during a period of great upheaval in America's social and political culture. How does Stegner's novel reflect the issues that were prevalent at the time of his writing? What are the parallels, if any, between Susan Ward's story and that of Shelly Hawkes? How does each woman represent her own era? Is either story as relevant today?

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Lissa at 10:00 AM | | Comments (0)