The Shock of the Fall - Questions

Hello everyone,

Please don’t forget that it’s book club tomorrow, and also don’t forget to bring along your allotted pot-luck item. If you weren’t given an item to bring and will be coming along tomorrow let me know what you would like to bring along.
Here are some questions for you to have a think about:

•    Why does Matthew need to tell his story? Is the act of writing a cathartic process?
•    How does Matthew portray life in the psychiatric ward? Were you shocked by any of the descriptions?
•    In Matthew’s invitation to Aaron and Jenny, he writes ‘I’m really sorry if I’ve got your name wrong. Part of me thinks it’s Gemma. Please forgive me if I got it wrong. Not making excuses, but I am a schizophrenic.’ Is this an indication that Matthew hascome to terms with his illness? Why does he joke about it?

See you all tomorrow!

The Book Thief

Most of the people at this meeting had finished the book but some were struggling with it. Interestingly two people at the meeting had also watched the film so were able to add this viewpoint to the discussion.

We discussed the fact that Death narrates the book, we felt that this gave it an interesting angle rather than seeing things through say Rudy or Leisels viewpoint. It was interesting that Death gave large hints about when people might be dying, often quite far in advance of the event. Some people liked this as it meant they could focus on the rest of the book rather than just the deaths. Other people didn't enjoy this as they liked the element of not knowing and having surprises through the book. Interestingly some people took a while to realise that Death was narrating rather than any of the other characters.

There is a lot of imagery in the book, especially from Death regards the colours he sees when collecting souls. Some of the book club really enjoyed this and felt it really added to the book. Others felt that while some of the imagery was interesting it did have a tendency to become a little too much at some points, causing confusion as to what Death meant.

We had a quick discussion as to how we saw Death managing to collect all the hundreds and thousands of souls during this particularly death ridden time. Some saw him as growing slowly larger and carrying more and more souls, others felt that he must move incredibly fast collecting one or two at a time. Interestingly we never find out where the souls eventually end up, just that Death pulls them from the dead bodies and collects them.

Some of the characters in this book really spoke to some of the book group, especially Mama and Papa. We felt that Mama, despite her gruff exterior, really loved both Papa and Leisel with all her heart, she just happened to have built a wall around her heart to protect it a little. We liked that this book showed the quieter ways that the German people tried to help the Jewish people rather than the big brash heroic ways that other books try to show. This felt more realistic to us. We also talked about how the people in the book felt different kinds of guilt, mostly to do with surviving when others had died, often in order to save them. They all reacted differently to their feelings of guilt, either trying to do good things because that must be the reason they survived, or wanting to do bad things to the people who caused their guilt, or simply trying to live a normal life.

One thing that we felt was missing was more information about the books mentioned in this story. Given that this is called The Book Thief we felt that it would have been nice to be given more background on the significance of the books, or even references at the end so the reader could also share the books that Leisel stole.

Overall we gave this book 8 out of 10.

The Book Thief - Questions

Hello,

Sorry this is incredibly late coming to you. Here are some questions about this months book club that you might like to consider while finishing your copy of the book:

-    Abandonment is a central theme in the novel. The reader knows that Liesel feels abandoned by her mother and by the death of her brother. How does she equate love with abandonment? At what point does she understand why she was abandoned by her mother? Who else abandons Liesel in the novel? Decide whether she was abandoned by circumstance or by the heart.
-    Guilt is another recurring theme in the novel. Hans Hubermann’s life was spared in France during World War I, and Erik Vandenburg’s life was taken. Explain why Hans feels guilty about Erik’s death. Guilt is a powerful emotion that may cause a person to become unhappy and despondent. Discuss how Hans channels his guilt into helping others. Explain Max Vandenburg’s thought, “Living was living. The price was guilt and shame.” (p. 208) Why does he feel guilt and shame?
-    The Grave Digger’s Handbook is the first book Liesel steals. Why did she take the book? What is significant about the titles of the books she steals? Discuss why she hides The Grave Digger’s Handbook under her mattress. Describe Hans Hubermann’s reaction when he discovers the book. What does the act of book thievery teach Liesel about life and death? Explain Rudy’s reaction when he discovers that Liesel is a book thief. How does stealing books from the mayor’s house lead to a friendship with the mayor’s wife? Explain how Liesel’s own attempt to write a book saves her life.

Live To Tell

Everyone had finished the book and most people said they would like to read more by Lisa Gardner.

One thing that caused some confusion was the use of multiple different voices, each voice then having a chapter before the next voice came back. Some people felt that this was confusing as they weren't sure who was who and also how each of the voices linked to the others. It also took a little while to get used to each of the voices when starting each chapter.

 We felt that it was very interesting given that it was based on the story of a young boy who has these same mental health issues as the children in the book. This brought it home that this could have happened to any one of our families. We wondered how we would cope with it, would we have been like the mother who was determined to look after her son due to the guilt she felt that she had caused his problems. Or would we have been like the father who left his wife and son to take his daughter to a safer place for her sake.

Interestingly the real child this story is based on was actually healed by a spiritual healer who used similar techniques to the healer in the book. At first this sounds unbelievable but when you look at the methods used they are basically cognitive behavioural therapies to do with breathing techniques, thinking positive etc. We also really loved the centre that the children were housed in, although we felt that it probably couldn't really exist in real life as it would be really expensive to run and some of the kids there had little or no funds behind them. It was also odd to have the unit on a top floor in a general hospital rather than in a separate unit maybe within the grounds of the hospital given the tendencies of the kids towards violent behaviour.

We were a little annoyed by the main character of D.D. as she seemed to be able to eat everything she wanted and still stayed skinny, this grated on the book club possibly as most of us are women and know that this just does not happen in real life.

The ending of the story felt a little bit rushed to us, and some elements were a little weird and far-fetched.

 Overall we gave this book 7.5 out of 10.

Book Selections December 2014 - April 2015

Hello everyone,

Thanks for your votes on the next few months worth of books.
Here are the results:

December – The Shock of the Fall – Nathan Filer

January – The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith

February – The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson

March – Cleopatra – Stacy Schiff

April – The Girl With All The Gifts – M. R. Carey

I’ve tried to make sure the size of the book corresponds to the length of the month so we’re reading shorter books in the shorter months.

Don’t forget that Novembers book is The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak! Hope to see you all then.

Live To Tell - Questions

Hello,

Here are some bits of information about this months book club. There are spoilers on this website so please do not read it unless you’ve finished this months book. On this website is a synopsis, some questions, some information on the true life background to the story, along with a playlist of music the author listened to while writing the book:

http://lisagardner.com/books/dd-warren/live-to-tell

I found it very interesting and i hope you will too.

What Alice Forgot

Everyone who attended this months book club had completed the book! We felt that the book was quite realistic with people arguing and not getting along well, rather than it being filled with hearts and flowers.

We discussed whether we felt that divorce was catching, that when one of your close friends of family gets divorced you start to look at your own life and your current partner and wonder whether you made the right choice. Then when your divorced friends/family seem to be having more fun being single and dating you may again look at your partner and wonder if you could have done better. It does seem that this happened in this book, feelings of dissatisfaction occurred after Gina and her husband separated.

The fact that the time that Alice lost included time halfway through her pregnancy meant that she almost felt that she had suffered the loss of her baby. It was as if she mourned this lost child and she couldn't connect that pregnancy bump with the 10 year old daughter she had. It took her a long time to come to terms with the fact that she had three children none of whom she now knew at all.

It was interesting to see how everyone coped with the Gina issue as she seemed to have irritated everyone apart from Alice who she became weirdly close to over a very short period of time. It seemed that Gina became a sort of cuckoo, pushing out Alice's husband and her sister to take up all of Alice's time and energy. This created some issues when it came to what happened to Gina during the period of time that Alice has lost. We felt that there was a lot of wind-up to finding out what had happened to Gina, with Alice finding out lots of things and remembering bits of other things and also not letting on that she didn't have her complete memory back. However, when you actually find out what happened we felt it wasn't as interesting as we had suspected.

We enjoyed the underlying message that you can change your life at any point. If you find yourself getting a bit too manipulative as Alice did you can become more caring again. Maybe you wouldn't choose to have such a dramatic accident in order to change but it is possible. It also seemed that once Alice had changed those around her also changed becoming nicer towards Alice and each other.

It was interesting to find out about the different characters as we went through the book just as Alice was being reintroduced to them as well. A lot of the characters came across as really mean and nasty to start but once we discovered their history it became understandable, and they then changed into nicer characters as Alice had a positive effect on them.

The ending we felt was a bit of a cop-out, it felt that she had actually written two endings and rather than chose she had one ending, then wrote another one 10 years in the future that was completely different. We would have preferred that the author picked only one ending and stuck with it. The ending for the sisters was especially cliched and slightly irritating we found

Overall we gave this book 7 out of 10.