Graduation Speeches Provide Discussion Far Beyond Graduates

Often with the craziness of graduation season, book groups either take a break or end up with half the group having not read the book of the month.  For a less time-consuming alternative, check out the many facets of graduation speeches.  Here are a few ways to select and compare graduation speeches that may be meaningful to your group.

Selecting Graduation Speeches

1. Have each group member find a graduation speech from his or her own graduation or a relative’s graduation.  Many colleges and some high schools keep a record of graduation speeches online.  More recent graduation speeches are often posted on youtube.com  
2. Scroll through speeches selected by NPR as the best commencement speeches, ever. Select a few for the entire group to read or have each member select one that is meaningful to him or her.
3. Find speeches from some of the frequent commence speakers— presidents, TV personalities, authors— and compare their speeches across the years or across colleges.
4. Select several graduation speeches from a year 10. 20 or more years in the past (perhaps the era when your book group members graduated high school or college) and compare them to a selection of speeches given this spring.

Discussion Topics

Blast from the Past

Can you find common themes across speeches from past years?  On the whole were the speeches more optimistic or pessimistic across different eras?  Were predictions of the future made?   If so, have those predictions born out or been avoided?

Your Graduation Speeches

What do you recall about the speeches you heard as a student?  Do you remember who the speakers were?  The tone?  The topics?  How were your high school graduation speakers chosen? How would you like high school speakers to be chosen?

The Value of Graduation Speeches

Why do you think the tradition of speeches at college being given by famous (or at least noteworthy) individuals began?  What is the benefit of the speeches to the graduates?  To their supporters?  To the world at large?

Then and Now

Were you able to discern common themes across speeches from a past decade?  What themes do you see emerging in this years’ crop of graduation speeches?  How are themes similar or divergent?  How do the topics and tones of speeches reflect the current era and in what ways are they timeless?

Speaker Potential

Read through Cristina Negrut's NPR blog post on the 25 Most Promising Graduation Speeches of the Year.  Do you agree or disagree with her categorizations?  What is your reaction to the speakers she has singled out?  Which of these speakers would you most like at your child's graduation?

Cannery Row

Book:    Cannery Row 

Author:  John Steinbeck

Edition:  Softcover, Penguin Books, 1992

You can purchase Cannery Row online at Hugo Bookstores.

John Steinbeck’s astute observations of American life is part of his broad appeal and why his novels remain a staple in many high school literature classes.  Cannery Row, one of his most endearing short novels, is ideal for a book group looking for a classic American novel; many of your members may already have the book at home.

The in-depth characterizations are drawn almost as individual vignettes.  As Steinbeck states in the prologue, “And perhaps that might be the way to write this book— to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.”  Clearly Steinbeck knew just what bait to use to attract the finest of stories.

There is ample to discuss around each of the characters.  Your group can focus on Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Cannery Row community and the community that Steinbeck personally knew in California during the Great Depression.  Or take your group’s discussion in an entirely different direction and probe the environmental and societal changes in and around Monterey, California between the Great Depression and now.

Internet Resources

There are a wealth of resources to support many different areas of focus for your group.  So many in fact, that rather than providing redundant triggers to get your book discussion started, I recommend looking over the Center for Steinbeck Studies for a selection of discussion topics.

Before beginning your discussion, you may want to watch the speech Steinbeck gave at the Nobel Banquet on December 10, 1962.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception”. 

If you are interested in the history of Cannery Row, read this brief overview of the history of the Monterey fishing industry , its rise and collapse.   

For a look at the canneries in 1940, The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a video of the canneries at the height of the sardine industry.  While the characters in Cannery Row come out by and large

when the cannery workers head home, the video will give you a sense for the feel of the activity of those employed in the area and you can imagine well the overwhelming fish smell that likely permeated every corner of Cannery Row from the flophouse to Doc’s laboratory.

If your group is wants to delve into a discussion centered on Doc, the central character and “the conscience of the story” as described by The Center for Steinbeck Studies, then listen to this 2003 Morning Edition story on NPR.  Part 2 in particular focuses on Ed Ricketts, a friend of Steinbeck's from whom he drew the character of Doc, and there is a brief audio segment of Steinbeck reading from the short story The Snake. 

Finally, two thematic areas that your group might want to explore are humanity and the environment.  Thoughts on Steinbeck’s vision of humanity and the thin fibers that connect us are raised by Dr. Susan Shillinglaw of San Jose State University.  For an environmental look at the change in the sea life populations in Monterey, The Atlantic published Why West Coast Sea Life Has Been Behaving So Strangely in January 2014.

Major Characters

Doc, loosely based on Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts, scientist who runs Western Biological Laboratory who, according to The Center for Steinbeck Studies,  “serves as the conscience of the story, as nearly all of the plot’s events, whether directly or indirectly, are processed through his viewpoint.” 

Lee Chong, grocer whose grocery is a “miracle of supply.”

Mack, “elder, leader, mentor, and to a small extent the exploiter of a little group of men who had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment,” page 9, who reside in the Palace Flophouse and Grill.

Perhaps this individual is reading Steinbeck on location

Hazel,  one of Mack’s “boys” who is slow in thought and helps Doc collect specimens.

Eddie, another of Mack’s “boys” and substitute bartender at La Ida. He keeps a winning jug for the boys. 

Hughie and Jones,  two other of the “boys” that live with Mack in the Palace Flophouse and Grill.

Gay, lives at Palace Flophouse a short time, known as a mechanic.

Dora Flood, madam and owner of the local whore house called the Bear Flag Restaurant.

Alfred, watchman and bouncer at the Bear Flag Restaurant.

The Old Chinaman, a mythical character.  “Some people thought he was God and very old people thought he was Death and children thought he was a very funny old Chinaman,” page 23. 

Andy,  a young boy and the only person to ever cross the old Chinaman. 

Frankie, young boy from an abusive home who spends most of his time with Doc.

Discussion Topics

There are a plethora of discussion topics available online.  The Center for Steinbeck Studies has a  list of major themes and essay questions that you can use to get your book group discussion started.  Here are three additional topics that are more outward focused to get your group started on making connections between your reaction to the book and your life experiences.

John Steinbeck

Certainly Steinbeck is a widely recognized and much lauded American author.  All the same, you can form your own perspective on what you like and dislike about his writing.  Be honest— what about his writing drew you in?  What about his style does not appeal to you?

In what ways does Steinbeck’s narrative style draw you in?  Did you find that the stories crawled out to meet you as Steinbeck allowed that perhaps the way to write the book would be to “let the stories crawl in by themselves”?  Did you feel close to any of the characters?  Could you make connections between any of the characters and individuals in your life?

Order, Disorder and Interconnectedness

Steinbeck presents a dichotomy of order and a reason for everything, and the surprise of death and disorder. In Doc’s lab the safe is no longer kept locked for a very good reason as once there was locked in the safe, “an open can of sardines and a piece of Roquefort cheese,” page 26.  And yet in the kitchen, dishes and cooking fat and vegetables are kept in glass-fronted bookcases, “No whimsy dictated this. It just happened,” page 27.  Near the end of the novel, Mack and the boys are “the stone dropped in the pool, the impulse of which sent out ripples to all of Cannery Row and beyond,” page 166.  

How is your view of the universe, aligned or at odd’s with the order and disorder presenting in Cannery Row? 

Through loosely entwined vignettes such as the ancient Chinaman, and the two boys, Joey and Willard, casually discussing Joey’s father’s suicide, Steinbeck intersperses moments of darkness.  How did these moments of darkness affect your reading?  Were they moments that made you stop and ponder life or simply move on to the next chapter?  Why do you think Steinbeck included these vignettes and how do they imbue the novel with life?

Cannery Row

The hustle and bustle of a multitude of localities ebb and flow over the decades as industries change, people relocate, environments change.  Cannery Row is but one example of a locale that has gone from the activity of a booming industry to falling into disrepair to being rebuilt as a tourist destination.  

What places in your life have you seen go through this cycle and be reborn with a new focus, whether tourism or a burgeoning industry?  What role do you think Steinbeck's writings played in Cannery Row being re-imagined as a tourist destination? Why are some places more successful at transformation after industries die out?  What parallels do you see between the boom and bust of the real life Cannery Row and the flow of life and death in the book?

Looking Out from  Cannery Row 2006

  

Me Before You Book Guide

Book:    Me Before You

Author:  Jojo Moyes

Edition:  Softcover, Penguin Books, 2013

You can purchase Me Before You online at Hugo Bookstores.

Me Before You is a beautiful, humorous, emotional and direct portrayal of the daily physical and physiological struggles of Will, a quadriplegic. For some reason, the main character and caregiver, Lou, reminds me of Natalie in the movie Love Actually.   She is easy to like and humorous as she takes the reader on her journey of self-discovery.

This modern novel is ideal for book groups to discuss how quadriplegics are perceived by themselves, by individuals who are close to them and by people who haven’t interacted directly with a quadriplegic.  More broadly, the novel offers opportunity to discuss how we each manage our “otherness” in any capacity, the ways in which barriers are erected between humans and how we can break down the barriers.  In addition, the book serves as a launching point for a discussion of end-of-life issues.

The novel is equally compelling for a personal read, offering many moments to laugh out loud and cry silently as the reader is immersed in the daily emotions of the two primary characters.  As a reader I never felt as if my emotions were being toyed with; every twist and turn felt honest and not exploitative as the author took me on a journey of love and discovery.

Internet Resources

Bioethicist Margaret Battin shares her personal story on NPR’s Fresh Air.  Her husband broke his neck in a bicycle accident in 2008 and now the end-of-life issues that Battin has written about extensively, hit home. This interview offers a personal perspective on a quadriplegic facing ending his own life.  

Alex Blaszczuk is a law student and amateur photographer.  In the fall of 2011, a car accident en route to a camping trip left Alex paralyzed from the chest down, unable to use her hands. Alex shares her story from within a Google Glass promotion on YouTube. What I found intriguing about watching this short video is the extent to which technology affords Alex the ability to take on basic tasks such as navigating and photography that she lost when she had her accident.  It is a promotional piece and not an in-depth story, yet you can see parallels with Will interacting with the technology that Lou helps him discover.

Major Characters

Will Traynor: young, wealthy banker, now living with his parents, who has been confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic since an accident in 2009.

Louisa (Lou) Clark: primary character and Will’s new caretaker 

Nathan: Will’s daily nurse

Katrina (Treena) Clark: Lou’s younger sister, single mother to Thomas

Patrick: Lou’s boyfriend

Bernard/Dad: Lou’s father

Josie/Mom: Lou’s mother

Camilla Traynor: Will’s mother

Steven Traynor: Will’s father

Georgina Traynor: Will’s sister

Alicia: Will’s ex-girlfriend

Rupert: Alicia’s fiance

Discussion Topics

Point of View

The novel is almost entirely told from Lou’s point of view.  However, the author, Jojo Moyes, intersperses four chapters from other perspectives.  The first of these is from Camilla’s perspective (page 105) when she describes how she came to offer support to her son in ending his life. Nathan has a brief chapter following Alicia and Rupert’s wedding (page 266). Steven has a short chapter with his mistress, sharing his hopes for Will’s planned adventure trip (page 289). Finally, Treena has a chapter right near the end of the novel, when Lou is back at home and Will is in Switzerland (page 335).

How do each of these round out the story for you?  Did you feel more or less sympathetic with each of the characters after reading a chapter from his or her perspective?  Did these chapters alter or expand your understanding of Lou?  How do you compare these snippets of other voices with other books you may have read which have multiple points of view such as Sarah’s Key or Orphan Train or Let The Great World Spin or any of a myriad of others?

Noticeably absent is any chapter told by Will.  In A Conversation with Jojo Moyes, at the end of the book, Moyes comments, “The only person whose mind I couldn’t enter was Will’s, because I wanted his intentions to be one of the central tensions of the book.”  How do you believe the novel would have been altered had the story been told from Will’s point of view?

  

Quadriplegia

Jojo Moyes relates the specifics of Will and Lou and Nathan as they manage moving Will, tending to him, taking him on outings.  In Lou’s first outing to the racetrack, starting on page 140, the author explores many physical challenges encountered in managing a wheelchair both due to Lou’s lack of experience and the track’s lack of accessibility.

Where have you encountered individuals with needs that are poorly accommodated in our public spaces?  Do you often see individuals using wheelchairs or other mobility devices in spaces you frequent?  What strides have been made in improving access for all?  Where do you notice the most significant physical barriers?

End of Life

In the Fresh Air interview, Margaret Battin speaks about the process of end-of-life and the issues swirling around it, the mind versus the body, the elements of eating, the individual reflection that each person faces in thinking about end-of-life issues and her discussions and feelings she shares with her husband. 

In the novel we hear directly from Camilla as to how she came to agree to support Will in his decision to end his life.  Did hearing Camilla from within her own mind, as it were, enhance or limit your view of her choice?  Were you able to sympathize with her situation or would you have made a difference choice? Who does Will involve in his decision and at what point?  

How do you personally feel about Will’s choice?  How would you respond if Will was a member of your family?  How would you feel if you were in Will’s situation?  

Do you know anyone who has faced such a choice?  How were you able to support that individual or not?

Lou’s Journey

At the outset of the novel, Lou says, “The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life— or  at least, shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window— is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are” page 58.

How does Lou rethink her idea of who she is?

Lou makes significant personal discoveries throughout the story.  In what ways did she make the discoveries herself and in what ways were Will and Treena instrumental in her self-reflection?  

Lou is battling her own deep secret.  Why do you think Moyes chose to include that facet of the story?  How is Lou’s hidden anguish juxtaposed against Will’s very visible anguish?  

Interpersonal Barriers

The moment Lou and Will meet, page 31, Will throws up his defense and Lou is, not surprisingly, repelled.  What role does each of Lou, Will and others play in breaking down the barriers between Will and Lou?

Where does Will encounter individuals who are uncomfortable around him?  Who is comfortable around Will?  How does each group show their discomfort or ease?  

Where have you encountered individuals who made you or others uncomfortable with their differences? What strategies have you found helpful for becoming more at ease with someone who had a physical difference whether a medical concern or a mental condition?

When have you or a close friend been the one with the difference?  How did you feel?  What did you notice strangers doing to embrace or avoid interaction? What reactions were most helpful?  Which ones were hurtful?

How can we each help break down barriers of difference whether as a bystander, a friend or an individual with a distinction?

Sarah's Key Discussion Guide

Book:     Sarah's Key
Author:  Tatiana de Rosnay
Edition:  St. Martin's Griffin Edition: October 2008

You can purchase Sarah's Key online at Hugo Bookstores.

Major Characters

1942:
Sarah Starsynski (known as Sirka until she stays with Genevieve and Jules): 10 year old French Jewish girl taken in the Velodrome d’Hiver roundup July 16, 1942
Michel: Sarah’s 4 year old brother
Rachel: girl with whom Sarah escapes from Beaune-la-Rolande
Genevieve and Jules Dufaure: French couple who take Sarah in after her escape

2002 to present:
Gaspard Dufaure: grandson of Jules and Genevieve
Julia Jarmond: An American journalist living in Paris in 2002
Zoe: Julia’s 11 year old daughter
Bertrand: Julia’s French husband
Mame Tezac: Bertrand’s grandmother
Edouard: Bertrand’s father, Mame’s son
Joshua: Julia’s American editor, living in Paris
Bamber: Photographer working with Julia
Frank Levy: Head of association organizing commemorations for 60th anniversary of the roundup.

Locations

26, rue de Saintonge: Sarah’s family’s apartment. Tezacs move in in July 1942, after the round up.
Velodrome d’Hiver: Where Jewish families were taken after Paris roundup in July 1942 and kept for several days before being sent to camps
Beaune-la-Rolande: The Loiret camp where Sarah and her parents were taken and from where Sarah escaped

Discussion Topics

History

How much of the historical story were you aware before reading the book? How did having the historical elements integrated into a novel affect your understanding, awareness and reaction to the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup?

Point of view

For the first half of the book the chapters alternate between Sarah’s story, told in the 3rd person, with Julia’s story, told in the first person. Then when Edouard tells his memory of Sarah arriving at his apartment and finding her brother’s body, the book shifts to only Julia’s point of view (page 156).

It is as if Sarah’s story is now in the present because someone in the present is sharing the story. The story can be revealed by characters in the present.  No longer is the story hidden.

How does the author use each point of view to convey the story? What is crucial in Sarah’s point of view? In Julia’s?

The Key

The key is used as a symbol for Sarah’s secret, both in her life and after her death.  The key is both physically the opening of a secret and metaphorically—Sarah hides it in her pocket and keeps the secret, she brings it out to share the secret. When Sarah tells her father about her brother she shows him the key (page 22). When Sarah reveals the key to red haired policeman she tells him that she locked her brother in the closet (page 90)

What keys have been revealed to you? What keys have you kept hidden and later revealed?

Secrets and Communication

Secrets are kept throughout the book. A number of individuals know pieces of Sarah’s story, but keep them hidden. Edouard isn’t even aware that his mother knew about Sarah until Zoe tells him after Mame’s stroke. Other secrets are kept as well—Sarah’s parents had not told Sarah of the true danger they were in before the roundup. Or why. Page 40: “If they had told her, if they had told her everything they knew, wouldn’t that have made today easier?”

In the short term the secrets make it hard for Sarah to understand what is happening. In the longer term the secrets are shown to age and eat away at the secret keepers.

Julia often blurts out information she has learned without thinking through either the ramifications or how to best communicate what she knows.  How do Julia's revelations help and hurt her and those she shares them with?

How can we achieve a balance between sharing the weight of our burdens and minimizing pain to those we love?  Especially in this age of immediate communication, when is better to refrain from exposing a feeling, an act, an event witnessed or at least pause to consider the impact our revelation may have?  When do secrets long held become a burden?

What themes struck you in the book?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Discussion Guide

Book:     The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Author:  Aimee Bender
Edition:  Doubleday hardcover, 2010

You can purchase The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake online at Hugo Bookstores.

Major Characters

Rose Edelstein, narrator starting at 9 years old

Joseph, Rose’s older brother by 5 years

George, Joseph’s classmate and Rose’s support

Lane Edelstein, mom, Rose’s mother

Paul Edelstein, dad, Rose’s father

Grandma, Rose’s distant grandmother who lives in Washington State and never visits

Eddie Oakley, dodgeball rival, classmate

Eliza, classmate with a crush on George

Sherrie, classmate who uses Rose’s talent as therapy

Larry, co-op president, with whom mom is having an affair

Carl, dad’s college roommate

Locations

Willoughby Ave, Hollywood, CA, home of Edelsteins

Bedford Gardens, where Joseph has his apartment

La Lyonnaise—restaurant where Rose ends up working

Discussion Topics

Tasting Feelings

Can you imagine what feelings might taste like?  Rose reacts so violently to her mother’s sadness, “You’re so sad in there, I said and alone, and hungry, and sad, “ page 75.   On page 242 Rose tastes her own feelings.  How does she react to that tasting?  How does she grow through her cooking?

What must it feel like to have someone else’s feelings be a part of you? Have you ever felt someone else’s sorrow or joy so deeply, that it was a part of you?  How are messages of need communicated among people?  How do you receive others deepest feelings?  How do people ‘shed’ their feelings among others?

Talents

Rose, Joseph and Dad each have a unique talent.  Rose, the ability to taste emotions in food; Joseph the ability to morph into objects; the grandfather theh ability to smell people’s feelings;  Dad, possibly a medical ability which he doesn’t explore (page 263).  Each character has more ‘typical’ talents as well—Rose the ability to meet people (page 40) and Joseph, extreme intelligence.  Dad, says his skill is making relationships happen—when referring to the footstool escapade in Berkeley—page 119.

Rose’s realization of Joseph’s ability grows over time.  She first notices his ability as a blur, page 47 then expands on page 114 “my brother had taken to disappearing”  and disappears when he babysits, page 122 and again on his high school graduation day, page 145.   Finally he disappears into the chair page 189.   He asks for the grandmother’s folding chairs. Why were those chairs important to Joseph? How do the characters react to one another’s more typical talents?  How is Rose bothered by Joseph’s intelligence?  How is Joseph burdened?  What does Joseph’s ability to morph into objects represent to you?  What does Rose’s ability to taste people’s feelings represent to you?

How does Rose react to finding out that George is helping Joseph with his studies and not the other way around?  What does Mom think of Dad’s talent of making the footstool seem like fate?  Dad says to Rose (page 170) “You have things to offer, he said, gruffly.” That is nearly the extent of their heart to heart talk.

Do you remembering discovering that a sibling or a parent wasn’t the best in some category where you had them on a pedestal?  How did you react?  How have your parents recognized or ignored your abilities?

Each faces his or her more unusual talent in significantly different ways.  Rose confronts hers head on, talking with friends (George takes her to a bakery, page 60-67) and doctors about her taste sensations and eventually uses her talent to help teens.  Joseph keeps his talent private, yet seems to pursue his ability to morph into objects. And Dad avoids his talent—staying outside of hospitals even for the birth of his children and when Joseph is hospitalized.  Dad doesn’t want to explore his talent “No, he said.  I’m sorry, Rose. I saw what it did to my father.  I’m not going in.” page 264.  “Going in” may refer specifically to going into hospitals, but it can also take on a more symbolic meeting—Dad doesn’t want to go into his talent, to explore his skill.  Rose is amazed that her father has a choice—he can avoid facing his talent. But does he truly avoid it?  He isn’t in the hospital for his children’s births or for Joseph in the ER.  What is the downside of ignoring his talent?  How might Joseph and Rose have faced their fates differently if Dad had embraced his talent?

What talents do you have?  How do you embrace or avoid them?  How do you share them with others?  What talents do you see others sharing?  Hiding?  What are the positive aspects of talents and what are negative?

Characters have varying degrees of belief in Rose’s, Joseph’s and Dad’s abilities.  George embraces and believes both that Rose can taste feelings and Joseph can move into objects.  George sees Rose’s talent as a positive, “It’s not a problem, it’s fantastic.” Page 71.  Sherrie uses Rose’s talent and ignores the rest of Rose (page 159-161) .  How do others’ reactions to their talents support or diminish each character?  The school nurse and emergency room doctors don’t believe her and try to fit her into what they know— “she seems to be okay.  Give her time,” page 79. 

How have you supported a friend or a family member as he or she has explored her talents?  How have you dismissed someone’s talents or seen someone’s talents dismissed?  What talents do you see in others that they are unaware of?

Relationships

Parent/child

Joseph and his mother seem to have a much stronger bond than Rose and her mother.  How does Rose react?   Page 69 “sometimes I wondered if, on Saturdays, she dragged her hands over raw wood to preserve the special time with him.”  And yet Rose actually knows more about how her mother is feeling than her brother.  And she tells herself she needs to pretend she doesn’t, page 81: “and now my job was to pretend that I did not get the message.”  Later Rose has a different view of her brother removing the splinters page 250 – “he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.”

Page 280 mom admits that she sometimes feels like she doesn’t know her children.  Rose thinks this is the humblest thing a mother could admit.  How do you think Rose feels about this? 

Have you ever felt like your parent didn’t know you?

Grandmother

What significance do the grandmother’s “gifts” and phone calls have? Page 99 “We still got regular packages of household items from Grandma, slowly mailing her life away in Washington State”  How did you react to the grandmother’s pronouncement on page 91 “But you don’t even know me.  How can you love me?  It should be earned.”   What do you make of that?  On page 100, Mom offers to Rose a few bits of her relationship with her mother. How would you characterize the relationship between the Mom and the Grandmother? 

When have you reached out to help someone and been rebuffed?   Do you see varying degrees of emotional bonds between parents and children?  How does that make you feel?

Spouses

Mom believes in signs. She believes her finding Dad was a sign.  How does she react on her wedding day when Carl tells the story of the footstool?  Page 89-90.  How do you think her marriage and subsequent affair were shaped by that knowledge?  Would it have been different if she had never found out?  What does the footstool represent to Rose and why does she want to keep it?   Page 91, “I patted the seat.  This one, I said.  The velvet was soft.  I sidestepped the piles and took it for my room.”

What have you wanted to hold onto from your parents’ relationship?  How have your relationships been changed by finding out something did not happen as you thought?

George

How is Rose’s relationship with George stifled? How is it fulfilled or unfulfilled?  Should they have come together? Why didn’t they?

Siblings

When does Rose feel close to Joseph?  What draws them together?  What pulls them apart?

Growing Up

On page 279 Rose says she wants to go back to the innocence of being 8. 

When have you wanted to go back?  What information do you wish you didn’t know?

Orphan Train Book Discussion Guide

Book:       Orphan Train

Author:    Christina Baker Kline

Edition:    HarperCollins softcover, 2013

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

Tenth of December Discussion Guide

Book:       Tenth of December

Author:    George Saunders

Edition:    Random House hardcover, 2013

Online Resources

Most of these stories have appeared in the New Yorker along with many other of his short stories, so you can find a treasure trove of insights on The New Yorker online .  I recommend two particularly fascinating interviews.  The discussion he has with the New Yorker about The Semplica Girl Diaries offers a range of insights for discussion.  In January 2013, a discussion on Tenth of December explores Saunders as a writer and how creating “semi-fantastical worlds” elevate his writing.

In May 2013, George Saunders delivered the commencement address at Syracuse University.  While his speech may not be directly intertwined with a discussion around this book, it’s a) a wonderfully emotive and full-hearted prescription that can be enjoyed by many far beyond college seniors garbed in caps and gowns and b) seeing and hearing the author provides a perspective on the soul behind the pen. 

Story Synopses

Victory Lap, a boy watches the attempted abduction of the girl next door and needs to decide whether to act.

  Characters: Alison and Kyle.

Sticks, 2-page story of a metal pole a dad drapes with sentiments of life.

  Character: dad.

Puppy, two mothers, one trying to raise a child with severe issues and a second trying to love her kids better than she felt loved by her mother, meet over a puppy.

  Characters: Marie, mom looking for puppy; Callie, mom selling puppy.

    
Escape from Spiderhead, pharmaceutical experiments change feelings into lust and the title character, Jeff,watches and meets death.

  Characters: Abnesti, manager administering experiments; Jeff, Heather, Rachel, Rogan, Keith all experiment subjects. 
   

Exhortation, a memo from a boss creates an analogy between unnamed work in a dysfunctional company and cleaning a shelf.

 Character: Todd, memo-writer.
   

Al Roosten, a deluded man participates in a charity benefit and keeps a running commentary of his daydreams.

  Characters: Al Roosten, title character; Larry Donfrey, local business owner also in charity benefit.
     

The Semplica Girl Diaries, a diary kept by a dad in a parallel dimension details the chasm between the haves and the have nots and the oppressed as well as the similarities we share in the lengths we will all go to for family happiness.  

  Principal characters:  Dad, narrator; Pam, wife; Lilly, daughter for whom party is made; Eva, daughter who releases SGs.
   

Home, a soldier returns home to live with his mother and tries to make sense of the rift between his past life and the present.

  Principal characters: Mike, narrator; Ma, Mike’s mother; Harris, Ma’s boyfriend; Renee, Mike’s sister.
   

My Chivalric Fiasco, an employee witness his boss rape a colleague and is given a promotion to keep quiet.

 Principal characters: Ted, narrator; Martha, work colleague who is raped; Don, boss.
   

Tenth of December, in the title story an awkward boy unknowingly heads toward a cancer patient planning to commit suicide by freezing in the wilderness and soon the tables are turned.

 Principal characters: Robin, boy; Don Eber, old man.

Discussion Topics

The following topics are just a beginning to form a conversation around Tenth of December.  Let your group channel the discussion in ways meaningful to your members.  If there is one story or one theme that is particularly captivating for your group start there and see where you wander.  Or if you have group members who can’t always set aside time for reading, you may want to select several stories in advance, ensure everyone reads them, and delve into those.   

Collection of Stories

Short stories, as with any work of fiction and often non-fiction, can be read on so many levels from the straightforward pleasure found in slipping into someone’s else’s tale to unpacking the complex emotions and connections that the stories raise in your psyche.  How did you read this collection?  Did the depth of your involvement waver from story to story, or as you read more of the stories?  Did you read them sequentially or in some other order?

How did having these stories bound together enhance or detract from your reading pleasure?  

What commonalities across the stories appeared to you as you read? 

Which of the stories most struck a chord, positive or negative, with you?   

After reading through the New Yorker interview with Saunders, did you see other similarities?  

There are ten stories in this collection.  How intentional do you think that is given the title of the book?

Writing Style

Whether in the first person or third person, Saunders often employs a running commentary going on in the characters’ minds to show both the action and the characters’ reaction to what is happening.  

• In both Victory Lap and Puppy,  there are two principal characters.  Although written in the third person, as the viewpoint shifts from one to the other, we, as readers take in the world through the thought process of the character controlling the perspective.   
• Escape from Spiderhead and Home are both written in the first person as a running commentary of what the protagonist is seeing and feeling, with interspersed dialogue.  
• Exhortation and Semplica Girl Diaries are both written as a correspondence, the first a memo and the second a journal.

How does this running commentary shape your feelings towards the principal characters?  Do you like this style?

Ties to Your Life

Many of these stories have futuristic or science-fiction elements.  Yet all are grounded in emotions of human beings.  Which of these stories seemed most grounded in realism to you?  Which aspects of the stories drew upon emotions you have encountered as an employee?  As a parent? As a human?  How did the science fiction elements of the stories intensify or minimize those emotions?

In his interview on Tenth of December, Saunders states,

“even though the settings and situations in the stories were sort of cartoonish and overwrought, my real beliefs and anxieties were being mapped out onto these fictive worlds more powerfully and exactly (albeit inadvertently and in a sort of fun-house manner) than they ever had in anything more “real-life” that I’d written. And, in fact, the weird thing was that these new stories were sort of leading me to understand what I believed about the life I was living, in a way that no amount of rational thought could have done.”

So often we see ourselves in contrast to similar individuals around us whether our colleagues, or classmates, volunteers we work with or neighbors we meet on the block.  Making comparisons with individuals who are similar to us might be an ego-booster or ego-buster. Yet when we are apart from our usual circle, our reflection can change markedly.  Where in your life have you seen your self-awareness refined through a contrast with an out-of-the ordinary experience or against an atypical backdrop?   

Connections Between Stories 

Some stories are similar in perspective of writing style, others are similar in content.  For instance Victory Lap and Tenth of December  both focus on two characters who have a life-saving impact on one another.  Both swerve toward a cliff and teeter on the edge before taking a step back. In what ways is the life-saving a two-way street in each?  How does each character fundamentally change another’s life?  Where do the two stories diverge from one another?

In an interview with the New Yorker discussing the short story Tenth of December, Saunders comments, 

“So that was interesting to me, and also I felt this story to be somehow connected to another one—“Victory Lap”—which ran in the magazine a couple of years ago; I could feel both stories asking questions like: Given the nature of the life (nasty, brutish, short), how is it that good does, in fact, manage to get done? Or: when goodness manifests, how does it manifest? What does it look like and sound like, what are the qualities of the people who do it?”

Escape from Spiderhead and My Chivalric Fiasco use trademarked pharmaceuticals as a means to drastically change an individual’s feelings and inhibitions.   How did the drugs place the time period or universe of the story?   How did these pharmaceuticals connect the stories?  If these drugs did not have an health risks aside from those exhibited in the story, would you take them?  In what situations?

Did you see these stories as connected?  Were there other stories that seemed connected to you?

Emotional Response to the Stories

Novels can certainly take a reader through a full circle of emotions, yet short stories often pull on our emotions more quickly and more unexpectedly.  Overall, how similar or disparate were your emotional reactions across this collection?  On the whole were you hopeful, distraught, relieved, frustrated, angry?  Or was your reaction to each story stand alone and disconnected from the others?

In an interview with the New Yorker in 2011 Saunders says, 

“I started to feel that, at certain points in some of the stories, the most interesting aesthetic motion—the plot twist, if you will—was the one that swerved away from what I might call the habitually catastrophic.”  

Would you agree or disagree as you consider your reaction to each story and the collection as a whole?

You can purchase Tenth of December online at Hugo Bookstores .

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain Discussion Guide

Book:       Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain 

Author:    David Eagleman
Edition:    Pantheon Books hardcover edition, 2011

Online Resources

In The War on Reason, an article in the March 2014 issue of The Atlantic, Paul Bloom presents an opposing viewpoint to "human beings are little more than puppets of their biochemistry".  Definitely worth reading for a fuller discussion of the essence of this book.

In the April 28, 2014 issue of the New Yorker, Michael Kingsley writes an article on his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease with a humorous slant that explores our reactions to measuring and understanding what is going on in our heads.

National Geographic has a number of recent articles on the brain available online.  National Geographic may require registration to view some of their articles:

• National Geographic October 2011, The New Science of the Teenage Brain
• National Geographic Beyond the Brain
• National Geographic Secrets of the Brain

Major Characters

Your Brain

Discussion Topics

The following topics are just a beginning to form a conversation around Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.  Let your group channel the discussion in ways meaningful to your members.

Your Brain in Action

Many experiments and brain functioning scenarios are presented in the book.  Which of the brain functions could you most identify with?  Do you see a calendar floating in front of you?  (Page 81) Do you have a wider spectrum of color recognition than most?  Do you drive home from work and not remember taking the exit off the highway?  Do you ever play the observation game and try to remember what a particular person or place looks like?  Have you ever been hit by another car and the other driver said, “He wasn’t there”? 

Analogies

As part of his writing style to help the book appeal to the lay reader, Eagleman offers many analogies between the brain and areas of life including the following:

•  a comparison to a newspaper (page 6)
• an analogy comparing the consciousnesses to the brain as earth compares to the Milky Way or the universe (page 19)
• a comparison to a young monarch giving no credit to the workers running the kingdom (page 99)
• an analogy relating the brain functions to a government with rivalries (page 107)

Which of these analogies worked best for you?  Which opened up new ways to think about the brain—its vastness, its multiple and overlapping subroutines?  Is there another that is more effective for your understanding?

Future Self / Present Self

Eagleman writes about the time shifting of the brain in several ways.  One is the comparison of an individual in the present to the same individual in the future facing different inputs.  When have you made a Ulysses contract (page 122) with yourself to keep your future self from going down the wrong track?

Secrets

When is it hardest for you to keep a secret?  How did Eagleman’s presentation of a secret as a struggle between competing parts of the brain (page 147) help you understand secrets—yours or ones that have been shared with you?

The February 2014 issue of the Atlantic summarizes 6 studies on secret keeping.  Maybe J.K Rowling tapped into the essence of our brains and secrets as she created Secret-Keepers in her Harry Potter series.

Chicken Sexers

On page 57 Eagleman describes the ability of individuals to separate male and female chickens and how this seems to be done entirely by the subconscious.  Is there anything that you find yourself doing more in the subconscious than the conscious?  Would you call that a hunch? (Page 66) Have you ever known the answer but been unable to explain how you came to it?

Magic

Eagleman recounts the story of Arthur Alberts recording voices in Africa and the natives finding the tape recorder counterintuitive (page 3).  Throughout time the currently unknowable has appeared magical. 

What moments in history are the most vivid to you of times when humans were unable to comprehend what we now understand?

Eagleman also discusses the umwelt (page 78), the environment, and the umgebung, the bigger reality.

What do you want to know a lot about, but feel is unknowable? If you could accelerate the learning in just one area of science so you could find ‘answers’ in your lifetime, which area would you chose?  Why?  What do you think about that you wish you could comprehend – a 5^th dimension?  An infinite universe?  An infinite time scale?

Speed and Energy Efficiency and Evolution

On page 72 Eagleman writes that the advantage of having an activity hardwired in the brain are speed and energy efficiency. 

How does this balance with your view of evolution and the brain?  What about with our ability to create artificial intelligence?

Religion and Emotion

Religion and emotion, both of which many consider stuff of the human brain, aren’t explored in great detail beyond emotion of criminal acts.  How do you integrate religion and emotion into the physical stuff of the brain?

Criminal Justice System

Eagleman devotes an entire chapter to what all this means to the criminal justice system. Some readers have reacted negatively to this analysis.  Here are two quotes from Goodreads:

"Eagleman uses a "slight of hand" writing style. Just as he describes how magic tricks deceive the brain, Eagleman uses this entertaining little book to advocate for a social and justice system that disregards civil rights…Our criminal justice system, in fact our whole legal framework, is based on the underlying assumption that individuals have the right to control their own bodies. Even when they have forfeited the right to be physically free and are imprisoned, our government does not have the right to force medical treatment and that includes psychological treatment. Eagleton is advocating for "treating" criminals. This should send a chill up his readers' spines. Our sordid history of "treating" criminals includes institutionalizing gays and lesbians and "treating" them for their "disorder", medical experiments with African American prisoners, and institutionalizing people with developmental disabilities for the minor offenses."

"I found, though, that the chapter on culpability in relation to crime rubbed me the wrong way, somehow. He built his theories up to the point where it seemed as though he wanted to take any responsibility for anything we do away from us, attributing every bad action to neurological irregularities. He even seemed to discount any sociological outside factors, landing firmly on the nature side of the nature vs. nurture argument, virtually reducing human beings down to a series of electrical impulses in the brain."

Whether his use of the term ‘warehouse’ or his seemingly slippery slope of a criminal not being responsible for acts his brain controls, these readers have difficulty calmly reflecting on what Eagleman is putting forth.  In addition, Eagleman focuses on the accused in the criminal justice system, but what about the witnesses? 

How did you react to his view of the criminal justice system with respect to the human brain?  If the witnesses are recounting what they saw, heard or sensed, how reliable is their testimony in light of what Eagleman presents about the human brain and perception?

Consciousness

Eagleman presents that the value of consciousness from an evolutionary perspective is to allow us to be cognitively flexible (page 142).   What is consciousness to you?  What do you see as the value of consciousness? Do other animals have consciousness?  Eagleman offers his perspective on page 144.

Freewill

On page 167 Eagleman states “however, at this point, no one can see a clear way around the problem of a nonphysical entity (free will) interacting with a physical entity (the stuff of the brain).”  He does admit that this is “predicated on what we know at this moment in history, which will certainly look crude a millennium from now.” 

How does lack of freewill sit with you?  Do you agree that at this point in time the essence of free will makes no sense?  Do you believe we will gain understanding that will show free will as scientifically existing?  Is free will a scientific question to you?

True Self

Eagleman presents many studies that have shown conflict between what one consciously does and what one unconsciously does.  For instance, consider the experiment on page 60 for subjects to note what they like and dislike. Or chapter 5, The Brain is a Team of Rivals.    In the end he comes back to this question (page 203) discussing the you and soul and finally on page 224 that there is so much we don’t know about our brains that indeed it seems like magic.

A Book for Book Lovers: Step Out Of Time

Book:     The Emperor of Paris
Author:  CS Richardson

A book I am delighted to own; to hold; to re-read.  But not a story for everyone—the reader needs to be comfortable with holding the threads of multiple characters as they slide between the pages of the book and drift from the present to the past, creating ripples as they gently bump against one another; each telling his or her own story and also sharing the story of stories. 

A story can begin with a word, or by stepping onto a book, or with the glimpse of an object, or with the stroke of a paintbrush or with the uncovering of a scar.  Each character shares her own personal way of stories and lets the reader become deliciously wrapped up in them, a chuckle here, a tear escaping there, a sigh.

The Emperor of Paris is as different from The Ocean at the End of the Lane as can be and yet they share the essence of story.  Curl up with this book and let the story be unwrapped for you.

“The place I call there is not as cruel as you may think and you don’t have to go far to reach it.  Sometimes all you need do is walk to the end of the street and turn the corner.  And remember, no matter how far you wander, here will always be here." page 172