Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi

This is one of those books that will stay in my memory for ever. I listened to it on CD and it was very well read.  The story is that of a man in a lifeboat with a tiger, which doesn't sound too interesting, but it was. Somehow, despite the picture of the tiger on the front of the book, I didn't realize what it was about when I started to read it, so the part where Pi (yes that's his name) realized there was a tiger on board was a complete surprise to me. From there the book just got better and better. 

The book recently came out as a movie and, while I don't usually go to the movies very often, I did go and see this one as many people were saying it was a really good movie. Everything about the movie was excellent: the acting, the animals, the story line and the whole production. I heard the criticism that the movie was too long, but I didn't find it so.

I did read Yann Martel's second book, Beatrice and Virgil, and very much disliked it. The reason being that it was the story of an author who had had a very successful book who was struggling to write a second book. I felt it was autobiographical, and not very good in itself. Usually if I like one book from an author, I like all of them, but not in this case. It just didn't have the feel of quality of the Life of Pi. People suggested that the book was an allegory and had a double meaning, but I didn't see it.

Life of Pi

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs

The book was somewhat long, but never boring. I learned many facts about Steve Jobs that I didn't know before.  Although he was the CEO of Apple, he wasn't the only one with ideas, the book often appears to claim that he was the only one who came up with the design ideas. 

Steve Jobs gave Walter Isaacson free range to write whatever he wanted in his book, and it seemed factually accurate. My only criticism was that there was a little too much detail. Frequently there were transcripts of whole conversations that maybe didn't need to be there. 

I listened to this on CD and I'll just say that I've heard better readers of audiobooks. 

As members of a book club in Silicon Valley, many people knew people who knew Steve Jobs. And one of our group used to work for Apple. That is why we decided to read a biography when we didn't usually do so. That, and the fact that Steve Jobs had just died when we were choosing the books. 

It was definitely a good book to read, but needed more time than average because of its length. 

I would like in the future to read another Walter Isaacson book, he has also written the following:

Einstein: His Life and Universe
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Book Club Questions for The Infinite Tides

I reviewed The Infinite Tides here

The book is fairly new and I couldn't find any book club questions for it, so here are some I have written that may help your discussion.

1.  What was the main theme of the book? Was there a meaning to the story?

2.   Did you like the character of Keith or not?

3.    Did Keith’s marriage fail just because he was out of space and not available at the time of his daughter’s death, or would it have failed anyway?

4.    What do you think of what his wife did? Should she have spoken to him face to face instead of through electronic media?

5.    How did Keith deal with his loss? What should he have done?

6.    Were you surprised that Keith was a local celebrity? How does he handle his new fame?

7.    Did you see a parallel between Jennifer and Nicole and Keith’s own wife and daughter?

8.    Is Keith’s reaction to his loss typical of men in general? Do women react to grief differently than men?

9.    How did his friendship with Peter and Luda help his return to normal life?

10. What do you see in the future for Keith?

The Infinite Tides by Christian Kiefer

The Infinite Tides: A Novel

The premise of this book is a great one. Keith Corcoran spent all his life working for his ambition of becoming astronaut and just as he makes it, he loses his family. Keith is an astronaut and is physically in space when he hears his teenage daughter has died in a car accident. Before he can get home he learns his wife has decided to leave him. The story is that of Keith arriving home to an empty house, no wife or child and very little furniture.

The book is one of grief, and uncertainty. When he heard about his daughter’s death he started getting really bad headaches, which continued when he came back to earth. So through the book he is uncertain if he can return to his job or not.

Keith becomes friends with two of his neighbors and the plot involves his relationships with these people as well as memories from his past. 

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still Alice

Alice is 50 and is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. 

The book was written by Lisa Genova, who has worked with Alzheimer's patients, and there is a lot of information throughout the book. In fact, if you or a loved one were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, this would be a good informative book to read, and I'm sure that was the author's plan when writing the book. There is a lot of information in fiction form without it being a textbook.

I related to Alice, a Harvard lecturer and mother of grown children. I felt I knew her from page one. Her life was full and the diagnosis was sudden, and then while reading the book we are treated to an increase in the symptoms of the disease. 

I felt so sorry for her when she went out for her usual jog and got lost on her way home, or when she couldn't find her blackberry and another family member found it in the freezer. We are invited in to the life of the family, which isn't a picture perfect family as in other books, but real with its own family tensions outside of Alice's diagnosis. 

I loved the character of Alice and her stubbornness to fight the illness, and although it was a sad book, enjoyed the book too.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Gargoyle

I read many books and once in a while one book stands out above the rest to be quality literature well written. This is one such book. I was so amazed at the wonderful descriptive passage on the first few pages, that I give the book to my children to read as an example of incredibly well written prose. 

Having said that, the opening of the book is of a horrendous car accident where the hero is horribly badly burned. I enjoyed the description, but not the image of such the author painted in my imagination. The hero (whose name we never learn) was a porn star until his body was wrecked in the fire of a car accident. For most of the book he is in hospital, unable to move, remembering his former life and not wanting a future life. 

Then Marianne Engel appears one day. She tells stories of them together in a former life. Are the stories real, or imagined? That is left to you to decide.

The thing I will say about this book is that is is graphic. One member of our book club gave up reading it because she didn't want to read the details of his life in the porn industry, and the incredible descriptions of his pain while in hospital. But for me, they are the things I remember most. I felt I was inside the head of our hero and thus that is what made the book memorable for me. Marianne adds mystery to the book as to who she is and where she came from. 

Truly an amazing read, if you like that kind of thing. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander

Time travel is the subject of this book. Claire, while on vacation in Scotland, travels from 1945 to 1743 to a much rougher country and people. Treated with suspicion as an outlander, she realizes she must marry James Fraser to survive. I don't want to say much more about the book except that it was published over 20 years ago and people are still reading it. It is the first in a series and most people who read the first book carry on to read the others. 

Me, I didn't care for it. I found the characters to be a little too unrealistic and the premise of time travel to be just an excuse to tell a story in 1743. But most of the people I have spoken to who have read this book, loved it.

Book Club Questions for Please Stop Laughing at Me

I reviewed Please Stop Laughing at Me here

It's not a typical book club book, so I didn't manage to find book club questions for it, so I wrote the following myself.

1. Why do you think Jodee was bullied?
2. Were her parents sympathetic or unsympathetic?
3. Do you think the spin the bottle episode when she was in 6th grade was normal 6th grade behavior?
4. Did Jodee do the right thing in phoning her parents or should she have remained silent?
5. Why was that the end of her friends being nice to her?
6. What would you advise your children to do in a similar situation?
7. When Jodee and her family moved, she made friends with the neighborhood children, but why did they turn on her when she started school?
8. Why did her parents send her to a therapist? Was it her fault she was bullied?
9. Why did she not want to go and see the therapist?
10. Jodee was an only child, do you think only children have a more difficult time forming friendships at school?
11. Why wouldn’t Jodee tell when she was bullied at high school?
12. Some people think a tough time at school makes a stronger person, do you agree?
13. Did you fear your own school reunions, and if so, why?
14. Do you think they really apologized at her 20-year reunion?
15. Why did it take her 20 years to recover from the severe bullying?
16. What is the solution to bullying?

Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman's Inspirational True Story by Jodee Blanco

Please Stop Laughing at Me: One Woman's Inspirational True Story

This is Jodee Blanco's story of being bullied in school, moving schools, being bullied again, and moving to another school. At times, as I read, I was shocked, another time I wanted to cry for her. All through her school days she felt she was alone, couldn't tell her parents, couldn't tell the teachers and didn't know what to do.

The book became a best seller and now Jodee Blanco runs seminars in schools about bullying. After doing this for a while, she wrote a second book, Please Stop Laughing at Us: One Survivor's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying

Within our group of moms I thought bullying was a good topic to discuss, and I was right. One person chose not to read the book and join us, but for the rest of us who did, the topic was well discussed. 

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

House Rules: A Novel

This is the story of a 17 year old Asperger's boy who is arrested for a murder he didn't do. Because he has Asperger's, his normal mannerisms are interpreted by the police as guilt. There is a good description of his autistic tendencies, and Jodi Picoult has obviously done her homework well, but the thing I didin't like about this book was the fact that it is fiction. There are many, many real life stories of autistic children, that I felt there didn't need to be a fiction story of an autistic person. Having said that, I found the information about Asperger's and autism to be correct, even the part where she suggests many parents of autistic children blame immunizations for the condition of their children. There is a discussion on immunizations for a couple of pages, without a definitive answer either way, which is how it is in the real world.

Autism and its milder form, Asperger's, is becoming increasingly common in society. So when we read this book in book club we got a larger turn out than usual and many of the people who came have an autistic child, or know of one personally. For those who are not related to autism, the book was very informative.

Here's another Jodi Picoult book I have reviewed
Change of Heart

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

This book is fiction, but it might not have been. The book starts in 1875 with Ulysses S. Grant requesting that 1,000 white women intermarry with Cheyenne Indians. The story is that of one woman, May Dodd, who volunteered to do just that. This is her story and the story of those she met along her journey. 

The books was, in fact, so realistic that I had to check it really was fiction. There is a lot of information about the lifestyle of the Indians and the attitudes of the time. And in our book club led to some "what if" discussions, which were also very enlightening. 

The book is really well written and very informative about the period, the politics and human nature. This is a favorite of mine amongst the book club books I have read.

Against Medical Advice by James Patterson and Hal Friedman

Against Medical Advice

Mostly in book clubs what we read is fiction, but this book was a rare non-fiction book we chose to read.

The story is that of a child who suffers with tourettes, a syndrome characterized by tics, usually physical but often verbal too. The book is written as if the boy is writing the story, but actually it's written by his father.

The story is that of his struggles with tourettes, but also with the medication that is prescribed, in particular with the side effects of the medication.

As a parent of an ADHD child and an autistic child, I was surprised in the discussion how little most people know about syndromes that affect today's children and as such the book was a good education for many book club members.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet by Jaime Ford

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Set in Seattle, this is the story of a friendship between Henry, a Chinese boy, and Keiko, a Japanese girl, just as the Second World War breaks out. The story switches between that time and 1986, when the Hotel Panama is opened up and the belongings of Japanese families are rediscovered. They stored their valuables just before being interned, but many didn't come back for them.

Henry remembers his friendship for Keiko while searching the hotel for any physical momentos, and flashes back to the story of their growing friendship in an environment where the Japanese were the enemy. It is both a narrative of those times and a delightful story of human nature and emotion.

Personally I started the book on a plane on my way to my first ever visit to Seattle. I knew it was coming up to read for book club, so I saved it for that moment. Reading the book in Seattle and visiting the city at the same time led me to understand a little about the culture of that city. The book describes the jazz scene of the 1940s and the ethnic communities of the time really well.

This book led to one of the best discussions I have had in a book club. Not just the story of Henry and Keiko, but the whole dilemma of different races in the United States, and whether the decision to lock away those of Japanese descent was a good one or not. This is the best type of book for a book club, a great story that leads to an active discussion.

Book Club Questions for The Sacred Thread by Adrienne Arieff

Here is my review of this book

The Sacred Thread by Adrienne Arieff

When looking for book club questions for this book, I couldn't find any, so I wrote my own, so here they are:

1. Did you enjoy the book, The Sacred Thread?

2. What would you have done if you couldn’t carry a baby to term?

3. Do you know anyone who has used a surrogate, or been a surrogate?

4. Do you know anyone who has had IVF?

5. What were the risks in Adrienne having her baby in India?

6. How do you think Vaina felt about the whole transaction?

7. The book is a successful story with a happy ending. What could have gone wrong with her plan?

8. Given that the cost of a surrogate in the US is about $100,000 and the cost of a surrogate in India is about $50,000, is the fact that American women are using Indians to help them achieve a family helping or abusing Indian women?

9. What is the Sacred Thread?

10. In what way were the parents prepared/not prepared for parenthood?

11. Would you ever have a baby for someone else, either paid or unpaid?

12. What is the limit of what you would do to provide for your own children?

13. Why do many women think they have a right to have a child?

14. Has the book changed your views on IVF or surrogacy?

15. How much did the book sell the idea of International surrogacy for others in the future?

16. Did you cry at any point when you were reading the book, which part?

17. Overall, how much did you enjoy the book?