THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS

Questions to Enhance  Book Club Gathering

GreekGirlsRead

1) Discuss where the word Janus comes from.  Why do you think the author named the island Janus Rock?
Tom actually describes this best when speaking with Isabel.

"You know Janus is where the word January comes from?  It's named after the same

god as this island.  He's got two faces, back to back.  Pretty ugly fellow."  

Isabel asks, "What's he god of?"  "Doorways.  Always looking both ways, torn between

two ways of seeing things.  January looks forward to the new year and back to the old year.  

He sees past and future.  And the island looks in the direction of two different oceans,

down to the South Pole and up to the Equator."

Upon further reading, i learned that Janus is also the god that presided over the beginning    and the end; war and peace. two oceans; two set of parents; two names.

 

2.  What does the lighthouse symbolize?

The first thing that comes to mind is isolation.  We know that a lighthouse is always set in dark, dangerous places where there is a risk of going off track.  Also, I believe a lighthouse is about light and dark.  In this story I believe the lighthouse tries to shed light on right and wrong, and because the light continues to move and shift, we never see where the light shines the brightest.  When you don't 'see' the impact you actions have on other people is it easier to live with what you have done?  Finally, I think a lighthouse is there for man to fight against nature to make a journey safer which can often be an unfair fight.  .

3.  Do you think life would have been different for Tom, Isabel and Lucy if they remained isolated on the island?

 

CHARACTER STUDY

 

1. .  Do you think Isabel felt any guilt over her part in this tragedy?
2. Tom's moral character
3. Ralph & Frank
4.  the grandfathers/the grandmothers
5. .  How did you respond to Hannah?
6.  Lucy-Grace-child and adult 

 

 

6.  Discuss the title of THE BOOK.  

 

 

7.  Favorite quote: "YOU ONLY HAVE TO FORGIVE ONCE. TO RESENT, YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL DAY, EVERY DAY".

very POWERFUL--DISCUSS.

 

SETTING

how does the setting make this story and the events happen as they did?

Set in the 1920s; after Australians had sent their young men to a distant war in Turkey; marriage ideals at the time; postpartum & depression; morals; the right thing to do.-

 

COMPARE TO today's  VALUES AND WAYS and how would this book be so different? the characters?

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2012, Maxine & Stella.

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

PAULA HAWKINS

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

1. We all do it—actively watch life around us. In this way, with her own voyeuristic curiosity, Rachel Watson is not so unusual. What do you think accounts for this nosey, all-too-human impulse? Is it more extreme in Rachel than in the average person
2. In both Rachel Watson’s and Megan Hipwell’s marriages, deep secrets are kept from the husbands. Are these marriages unusual or even extreme in this way? 


3. A crucial question in The Girl on the Train is how much Rachel Watson can trust her own memory. How reliable are her observations? Yet since the relationship between truth and memory is often a slippery one, how objective or “true” can a memory, by definition, really be? Can memory lie? If so, what factors might influence it? 


4. One of Rachel’s deepest disappointments, it turns out, is that she can’t have children. Her ex-husband Tom’s second wife Anna is the mother to a young child, Evie. How does Rachel’s inability to conceive precipitate her breakdown? How does the topic of motherhood drive the plot of the story? What do you think Paula Hawkins was trying to say about the ways motherhood can define women’s lives or what we expect from women’s domestic lives, whether as wives, mothers, or unmarried women in general?


5.  Having now finished The Girl on the Train, what surprised you the most?

CHARACTER DISCUSSION:

 MEGAN HIPWELL -

SCOTT-Megan's hsuband

Tom-Rachel's exhusband

Anna-Tom's new wife

Rachel

Detectives

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some book discussion questions.....on Wild

Wild (Strayed) - Discussion Questions



here are some ideas of what we can discuss however we don't have to use these....please feel free to discuss any aspect of the book.....

1. “The Pacific Crest Trail wasn’t a world to me then. It was an idea, vague and outlandish, full of promise and mystery. Something bloomed inside me as I traced its jagged line with my finger on a map” (p. 4). Why did the PCT capture Strayed’s imagination at that point in her life?

2. Each section of the book opens with a literary quote or two. What do they tell you about what’s to come in the pages that follow? How does Strayed’s pairing of, say, Adrienne Rich and Joni Mitchell (p. 45) provide insight into her way of thinking?

3. Strayed is quite forthright in her description of her own transgressions, and while she’s remorseful, she never seems ashamed. Is this a sign of strength or a character flaw?

4. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told” (p. 51). Fear is a major theme in the book. Do you think Strayed was too afraid, or not afraid enough? When were you most afraid for her?5. Strayed chose her own last name: “Nothing fit until one day when the word strayed came into my mind. Immediately, I looked it up in the dictionary and knew it was mine...: to wander from the proper path, to deviate from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild, to be without a mother or father, to be without a home, to move about aimlessly in search of something, to diverge or digress” (p. 96). Did she choose well? What did you think when you learned she had assigned this word to herself—that it was no coincidence?

6. On the trail, Strayed encounters mostly men. How does this work in her favor? What role does gender play when removed from the usual structure of society?

7. What does the reader learn from the horrific episode in which Strayed and her brother put down their mother’s horse?

8. Strayed writes that the point of the PCT “had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets” (p. 207). How does this sensation help Strayed to find her way back into the world beyond the wilderness?

9. On her journey, Strayed carries several totems. What does the black feather mean to her? And the POW bracelet? Why does she find its loss (p. 238) symbolic?

10. Does the hike help Strayed to get over Paul? If so, how? And if not, why?

11. Strayed says her mother’s death “had obliterated me.... I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill” (p 267). How did being on the PCT on her mother’s fiftieth birthday help Strayed to heal this wound?

12. What was it about Strayed that inspired the generosity of so many strangers on the PCT?

13. “There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another.... But I was pretty certain as I sat there that night that if it hadn’t been for Eddie, I wouldn’t have found myself on the PCT” (p. 304). How does this realization change Strayed’s attitude towards her stepfather?

14. To lighten her load, Strayed burns each book as she reads it. Why doesn’t she burn the Adrienne Rich collection?

GreekGirlsRead Suggested Books from last night....

THESE ARE THE SUGGESTIONS EVERYONE BROUGHT...

also Joel Olestein, Five Love Languages, and the Consequences Series....

GreekGirlsRead Book and Wine Club

 had a great  time last night at our first meeting of GreekGirlsRead Book Club! (and ItalianGirls-valentina!)

LOVED sharing our ideas and we picked some great GENRES :

smut/porn
historical fiction
non-fiction
autobiography
paranormal
self-help/inspirational

wine was Pinot Noir--we had a few bottles that were emptied so hop everyone got a chance to try a new wine....

book we voted on:  WILD by Cheryl Strayed
also a movie!

I know this book will take me out of my comfort zone because I consider myself this type of girl (lady):

 

and not the one below:

 

because this is how I would feel even thinking about such an adventure:

 

BUT THIS IS WHATS SO GREAT ABOUT BOOK CLUB...We only grow when we take ourselves out of our comfort zone...

SO HAPPY READING !

And see everyone at Tina Liapis' on

FEBRUARY 27TH!

Appetizers and Wine

xoxxo

peg