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(group member since Feb 14, 2013)
Casey’s
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from the DG Reads- Sailing Through Pages group.
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So excited to LISTEN to this one, since the audiobook is narrated by Meryl Streep!! Highly recommend!
Loved this one! Charming, even to me, who hates octopuses!! Loved the intertwining of the characters, and the intergenerational storylines.
Katie, I can make you a moderator of this page if you’d like!
Start the discussion here!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The disappearance of a beautiful, charismatic mother leaves her family to piece together her secrets in this propulsive novel for fans of Big Little Lies—from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.“Watch Me Disappear is just as riveting as Gone Girl.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are.
It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends.
But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?
Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page.
D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S 1. Shaker Heights is almost another character in the novel. Do you believe that “the best communities are planned”? Why or why not?
2. There are many different kinds of mother-daughter relationships in the novel. Which ones did you find most compelling? Do mothers have a unique ability to spark fires, for good and ill, in us?
3 .Which of the Richardson children is most changed by the events of the novel? How do you think this time ultimately changes Lexie’s life? Trip’s? Moody’s? Izzy’s?
4. The debate over the fate of May Ling/Mirabelle is multilayered and heartbreaking. Who do you think should raise her?
5. How is motherhood defined throughout the book? How do choice, opportunity, and circumstances impact different characters’ approach to motherhood?
6. Mia’s journey to becoming an artist is almost a beautiful novella of its own. Mia’s art clearly has the power to change lives. What piece of art has shaped your life in an important way?
7. Pearl has led a singular life before arriving in Shaker, but once she meets the Richardsons, she has the chance to become a “normal” teenager. Is that a good thing?
8. What ultimately bothers Elena most about Mia?
9. The novel begins with a great conflagration, but its conclusion is even more devastating. What do you think happens to Elena after the novel ends? To Mia and Pearl? To Izzy? Do you think Izzy ever returns to Shaker and her family? Why or why not?
10. Celeste Ng is noted for her ability to shift between the perspective of different characters in her work. How does that choice shape the reader’s experience of the novel?
11. We see how race and class underline the experiences of all the characters and how they interact with each other. In what ways are attitudes toward race and class different and the same today as in the late 1990s, when the book is set?
12. Izzy chooses “This Be the Verse” to sum up her life. Is what the poem says accurate, in the context of Izzy’s experience?
13. What does the title mean to you? What about the book’s dedication?
Our Book Club selection for September is Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. This book explores themes of secrets, motherhood, art and identity, and adoption.
Awesome! Glad everyone is excited! The book for August is Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jeninne Capo Crucet. There is a list of discussion questions in a separate thread dedicated to this month's book. Stay tuned for more great books!
Discussion Questions from the Publisher1. Lizet is on a very different path than that of her older sister Leidy, a single mom living at home. Describe their relationship as sisters. Where do they have common ground?
2. Do you remember the Elián González story from 2000? If so, did you recognize the fictionalized references in this novel? How did they contribute to building the picture of Lizet’s hometown and Cuban-American culture in Miami?
3. Describe Lizet’s relationship with her mom. Do you feel compassion for Lourdes as she tries to navigate the parallels between Ariel Hernandez’s journey and Lizet’s own?
4. Why does Lizet feel like a fish out of water both at Rawlings and at home in Miami?
5. Which scene was the most powerful for you as a reader? Why?
6. How are Lizet’s goals for her future aligned with her mother’s, and how are they different?
7. How does Lizet cope with the challenges of being a minority student at Rawlings? What could the school administration do differently to support her?
8. Have you ever experienced culture shock like Lizet does at Rawlings? How did you cope?
9. Who was your favorite character? Who was your least favorite?
10. What could Lizet do, if anything, to bridge the cultural and generational gaps with Lourdes?
Welcome back! It's time to read with your sisters again! We will add a new book each month and a discussion thread where we can post our thoughts. We aim to choose books that will be of interest to our diverse group, please spread the word and invite your sisters!
Reading All the Light We Cannot See right now myself!
Check out the author's website for more information regarding women pilots of WWII. http://www.elizabethwein.com/code-nam...
Here is a link to the author's website for this book. Discussion questions can be found here.http://jeankwok.com/book.shtml#girl
This is our book for the month of November--the story of one young immigrant to America in search of the American dream.
That's awesome, Michelle! Your brain will thank you! ITB Casey
Find a great discussion guide here:http://antondisclafani.com/book-clubs/
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for GirlsAnton DiSclafani
Feel free to discuss anytime! Thanks for reading along!
http://amortowles.com/reading-guide/Five years ago, three friends and I set out to read some of the “great books” – or those works of literature which would merit re-reading several times over the course of our lives. We started with Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and have since worked through the works of Twain and Faulkner, Cervantes and Marquez, Tolstoy and Nabokov – meeting once a month for dinner, dwelling on our favorite passages, on themes and ambiguities, sharing our perspectives.
As someone who has written quietly for twenty years, the notion that a group might gather to discuss a book of mine seems something so fantastic it must be a mirage. So, if you’ve come this far, I owe you my heartfelt thanks.
What follows are some questions for discussion that might have surfaced in my reading group for my novel. If you are interested, there is additional content regarding Rules of Civility at amortowles.com including brief essays on Walker Evans and jazz, a 1930’s time capsule, etc. You may also submit your thoughts or questions there. And if your reading group is meeting for dinner in New York somewhere between Canal and 34th streets, please let me know. If my schedule allows, I will try to stop by.
Amor Towles
New York, New York, 2011
1.)At the outset, Rules of Civility appears to be about the interrelationship between Katey, Tinker, and Eve; but then events quickly lead Eve and Tinker off stage. Are Dicky Vanderwhile, Wallace Wolcott, Bitsy, Peaches, Hank and Anne Grandyn as essential to Katey’s “story” as Tinker and Eve? If so, what role do you think each plays in fashioning the Katey of the future?
2.)Katey observes at one point that Agatha Christie “doles out her little surprises at the carefully calibrated pace of a nanny dispensing sweets to the children in her care.” Something similar could be said of how Katey doles out information about herself. What sort of things is Katey slow to reveal; and what drives her reticence?
3.)After seeing Tinker at Chinoisserie, Katey indicts George Washington’s “Rules of Civility” as “A do-it-yourself charm school. A sort of How to Win Friends and Influence People 150 years ahead of its time.” But Dicky sees some nobility in Tinker’s aspiration to Washington’s rules. Where does your judgment fall on Tinker? Is Katey wholly innocent of Tinker’s crime? Where does simulation end and character begin? Which of Washington’s rules do you aspire to?
4.)A central theme in the book is that a chance encounter or cursory decision in one’s twenties can shape one’s course for decades to come. Do you think this is true to life? Were there casual encounters or decisions that you made, which in retrospect were watershed events?
5.)When I told my seven-year-old son that I had written a book that was going to be published, he said: That’s great! But who is going to do the pictures…? While the Walker Evans portraits in the book may not meet my son’s standards of illustration, they are somewhat central to the narrative. But, in addition, there are the family photographs that line Wallace Wolcott’s wall (including the school picture in which Tinker appears twice); there are the photographs of celebrities that Mason Tate reviews with Katey at Condé Nast; there are the pictures that end up on Katey and Valentine’s wall. Why is the medium of photography a fitting motif for the book? How do the various photographs serve its themes?
6.)One of the pleasures of writing fiction is discovering upon completion of a project that some thread of imagery has run through the work without your being aware – forming, in essence, an unintentional motif. While I was very conscious of Photography as a motif in the book, and the imagery of Fairy Tales, here are two motifs that I only recognized after the fact: Navigation (expressed through references to the Odyssey; to the shipwrecks of the Titanic, Endurance and Robinson Crusoe; and through Thoreau’s reckoning and pole star metaphors); and The Blessed and the Damned (expressed through scattered references to churches, Paradise, the Inferno, Doomsday, Redemption Day, the Pieta and the language of the Gospels.) What role do these motifs play in the thematic composition of the book? And if you see me in an airport, can you please explain them to me.
7.)Upon completion of this book, one of my guilty pleasures has been imagining how Eve was doing in Hollywood. When Eve says, “I like it just fine on this side of the windshield” what does she mean? And why is the life Tinker offers her so contrary to the new life she intends to pursue? If you register at my web site, on the first of the year I will send you a short story on Eve’s progress.
8.)When Tinker sets out on his new life, why does he intend to start his days saying Katey’s name? What does he mean when he describes Katey as someone of “such poise and purpose”? Is the book improved by the four sections from Tinker’s point of view, or hindered by them?
9.) T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is referenced in the book’s Preface and its Epilogue. Why is that poem somehow central to Katey’s 1969 reflections on her 1938 experiences?
10.)Please don’t answer this last question until the wine glasses are empty and the waiters are waiting impatiently to clear your table: In the Epilogue, Katey observes that “Right choices are the means by which life crystallizes loss.” What is a right choice that you have made and what did you leave behind as a result?
