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.