Discussion Guide for Twelve Years a Slave

Book:       Twelve Years a Slave

Author:    Solomon Northrup

Edition:    Kindle

This book has moved to my new site for book guides, Relevant Reads, Twelve Years a Slave. Please stop by there and see what other book guides you might find interesting.

Discussion Guide for Flight Behavior

Book:       Flight Behavior
Author:    Barbara Kingsolver
Edition:    Hardcover HarperCollins First Edition, 2012

This book discussion guide, has moved to my new website, Relevant Reads. Please find all of my new book discussion guides there.

Curl Up With a Book and Find Your Childhood

Book:          The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author:        Neil Gaiman


This is a book to own and to wrap your hands around and to feel how the letters are embossed on the book jacket after you have read the last page and need to hold on to the characters and their tale.  This story transcends genre; it is the definition of story.  A story that brings out the child in all of us, or at least our memory of childhood and the nightmares that accompany childhood.  As Maurice Sendak is quoted in the epigraph, "I remember my childhood vividly... I knew terrible things.  But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them." Neil Gaiman deftly transported me into my own childhood memories.

Some of the images (no spoilers) of childhood thoughts that rang so true...

The main character, a young boy, discovers a hole in his foot, "I do not know why I didn't ask an adult about it.  I do not remember asking adults about anything, except as a last resort." 

In the recounting of his tale that is the stuff of dreams and nightmares, the narrator says, "Why do I find the hardest thing for me to believe, looking back, is that a girl of 5 and a boy of 7 had a gas fire in their bedroom?" 

Describing a black and white TV, "The vertical hold was unreliable, and the fuzzy black-and-white picture had a tendency to stream, in a slow ribbon: people's heads vanished off the bottom of the screen as their feet descended, in a stately fashion, from the top." 

"Peas baffled me.  I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting." 

"Adults should not weep, I knew.  They did not have mothers who would comfort them."

I took a journey with these characters and was left wanting more, but knowing that more could easily spoil the gift I had been given by an incredibly talented author.

Curl up with a book and find your childhood.