What do you think is the definining moment for the main character/person in your book? Why?

The entire story of What I Saw and How I Lied is a coming of age tale for Evie Spooner. She starts the book as an inexperienced and naïve girl, and throughout the book she enters into experiences that strip her of her innocence. Some of these experiences she willingly submits herself to, such as her budding romance with Peter Coleridge. Some, however, are forced upon her, either by Peter, her parents, or fate. She is forced to recognize that her stepfather whom she adores and admires, is not the man she accepted him to be. When he came home from the war, he started his own appliance store with money he said he got from a GI loan. She learns from Peter, however, that the two men came across a warehouse in the war that contained valuables belonging to Jews who had been sent to concentration camps. That's how he got his money.

These little losses of innocence weren't Evie's defining moments. Her defining moment came when she took all of the money Joe had gotten by selling the stolen goods and gave it to a Jewish woman the family had befriended in Palm Beach. Mr. and Mrs. Grayson were vacationing just like the Spooners were, and the two couples quickly became friends. The hotel management eventually found out that the Graysons were Jewish, and bluntly asked them to leave. Evie's reparations, while somewhat ineffective and misguided, were well-intentioned. She told Mrs. Grayson that even if she and Mr. Grayson wouldn't use the money, they doubtlessly knew people who could. Evie was trying to make up for the crime her stepfather committed against some specific Jewish people by paying different Jewish people. Not very effective, but she meant well.

How did the opening passage of the book (first paragraph up to first chapter) lead you to anticipate the ending of the book?

Judy Blundell starts her book with a chapter that can be found nearly verbatim towards the end of the book, at the climax of the action. It was like she pulled a Romeo and Juliet; she told us right off the bat exactly what was going to happen like in the beginning sonnet of Romeo and Juliet, and instead of making us put down the book because we already know the ending, it makes us want to keep reading. We know what will happen, but we still want to know how it happens. Blundell sets her story up with the heroine waking up alongside her knockout mother in a hotel room. You get the feeling that they have been staying there for a long time and something changed. Evie mentions that "We never went to the hotel dining room now. They knew who we were; they'd seen our pictures in the paper. We knew they'd be saying, Look at them eating toast -- how can they be so heartless?" which suggests that going to the dining room used to be a common occurrence for this girl and her mother. "They" saw their pictures in the paper, which means something happened to them that would have called for publicity. The characterization of the mother-daughter pair as "heartless" suggests that it was them who committed the act that earned their publicity, not that they had something done to them. All of this-along with the title-helped form my opinion that some scandal was going to occur and Evie and her mother would be a part of it.

I finished Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson and am now reading What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.

This book is really juvenile and I probably shouldn't be reading it. Sorry! Nevertheless, it is entertaining. I've had it on my shelf for a long time, and I probably should have read it when I first got it. I would have been able to relate to the main character more (she is fifteen, and an immature fifteen at that) if I had read it earlier. I always feel bad, though, when I have books that people have given me for Christmases and birthdays and I never read them, so I felt mildly obligated.

What I Saw and How I Lied is a coming of age story about Evie Spooner. Her stepfather has returned from World War II and takes Evie and her mother on a spur of the moment trip from their New York home to Palm Beach, Florida. There, they meet Peter Coleridge, a 23 year old ex-soldier. It becomes apparent not only that Peter and Evie's stepfather Joe knew each other in the war, but that Joe really, really dislikes Peter. Drama and mystery ensues.

On Finishing "Neither Here Nor There"

At the beginning of his book, Bill Bryson never states exactly why he took this cross continental trip. He did say that he travelled across Europe as a young adult and wanted to go back to appreciate it yet again as an older man, but the first time he went with his friend, Stephen Katz. This time he did it entirely alone. Here is my question: Why would anyone want to backpack across Europe for an indefinite amount of time alone? What could be enjoyable about that? Certainly, I can understand wanting to spend an afternoon alone, a day, perhaps even a weekend. But I would never ever want to go to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and have absolutely no one to rely on but myself. Doesn't Bill Bryson enjoy human companionship? He even left his pregnant wife at home! Why couldn't he have waited and taken this trip once she had their baby and had a lovely family vacation? I suppose it makes sense that perhaps his wife wasn't interested in traveling in an unknown land for that long, so maybe that was their compromise. He could have, however, travelled with a friend who was interested. Maybe even Katz again. Or, he could have gone and done whatever he wanted in whatever countries he wanted and then met his wife (and possibly children) in a more family and tourist friendly city. I just don't understand how he stayed sane. He couldn't even communicate with many of the locals. I just don't get it.

Who do you think is the intended audience? Why?

I think that Bill Bryson never writes for a specific group of people. I think that he knows he is funny and just wants to get as many people to read his work as possible. I mean this in the nicest way possible: I think he just likes attention. He doesn't care who reads his books as long as a large number of people read them. In this specific book, however, and actually when I think about in probably most of his books, he writes for the Baby Boomer generation. Bryson is a baby boomer, and he makes baby boomer jokes and allusions. This doesn't contradict what I said earlier: he directs some of his jokes and references to baby boomers, but they are never such that other readers won't get them. He wants everyone to enjoy his books.

The reason that I think his main audience in this book is the Baby Boomer generation is that his topic is one that many baby boomers will relate to. When he was a young adult, he backpacked through Europe, just like lots of others in his generation. Now he's writing about repeating that trip but this time as an older man. The places and experiences are probably things that other people around his age would appreciate. In addition, he tells the entire book from his perspective, obviously. He is a baby boomer. It would make sense that he wrote this book for others his age. Other baby boomers would be able to relate to his reactions to experiences, to his emotions, and to his wishes and desires on his trip, more so than young people or much older people.

Does the author seem to have a friendly, unfriendly or some other type of relationship with the content of the book? Why do you think so??

I finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and am now reading Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson. In response to your last comment, yes, I did enjoy The Time Traveler's Wife. I don't, however, think I enjoyed it as much as everyone else I've talked to. I think maybe it got too hyped up before I read it and I expected too much. It still was really very good, though.

Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There is an account of Bryson's travels through Europe. He saw Europe when he was twenty years old, and this is his account of his return trip as an older man. As always, Bill Bryson is funny. On his relationship with the content, it completely depends on the circumstances. For example, as he is walking along the canals of Amsterdam in the early hours of the morning, his relationship with the content is very serene and satisfied. However, when he is discussing the rudeness of people in a town I don't remember the name of, his relationship with the content is less friendly and more annoyed and frustrated. He conveys his annoyances not with the perfect words, but more with the perfect absence of words. I think he has mastered the art of omitting. When he talks about a funny situation, he never talks about what made it funny, or why he thinks it is funny, he just gives the reader the information and delivers it in a way in which you have to laugh at it. For example:

"...my seatmate turned out to be an acned string bean with Buddy Holly glasses and a lineup of ballpoint pens clipped into a protective plastic case in his shirt pocket....He spent most of the flight reading Holy Scripture, moving both sets of fingertips across each line of text as he read and voicing the words just loud enough for me to hear them as a fervent whisper in my right ear. I feared the worst....Somewhere over the Atlantic, as I was sitting taking stock of my two hundred cubic centimeters of personal space, as one does on a long plane flight, I spied a coin under the seat in front of me, and with protracted difficulty leaned forward and snagged it. When I sat up, I saw my seatmate was at last looking at me with that ominous glow.

'Have you found Jesus?' he asked suddenly.

'Uh, no, it's a quarter," I answered and quickly settled down and pretended for the next six hours to be asleep, ignoring his whispered entreaties to let Christ build a bunkhouse in my heart."

This is funny only because Bill Bryson never tells us that it is funny. He only provides us with the background information. He doesn't even tell us what he thought about the situation, so we have to draw our own (though obvious) conclusions about his relationship with the content. It's like with stand-up comedians, their jokes are usually only funny as long as they don't laugh too.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #

Would you call The Time Traveler's Wife a comedy or a tragedy, or are such classifications relevant to a work that plays havoc with time and allows one character to appear periodically after his death?

I looked up the exact definition of comedy to make sure I could commit to an answer to this question, and of the ones I found, most said that in a comedy everything thing ends up well for the protagonist, even if it doesn't end up well for every character. Things in The Time Traveler's Wife don't end happily for the protagonists, Clare and Henry. Henry dies, and Clare is therefore sad for the rest of her life. Even though Henry visits her once after his death when Clare is an old woman, that can't change the fact that they have been apart since he was forty three. Alba's life turns out okay, I suppose, she time-travels but she has more control over her condition. She grows up without a father, however, so of courses she isn't in the best place. Based on these thoughts, I decided that The Time Traveler's Wife can't be a comedy. I looked up the definition of tragedy, and it is:

a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction.

The book itself isn't exactly "serious or somber", but it does in fact deal with "serious and somber" themes of loss. Henry would probably be described by some as being "a great person." I would definitely call Henry's time-traveling ability "a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate" and this did lead to his downfall. Therefore, The Time Traveler's Wife is a tragedy.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #13

Both Gomez and Celia warn Clare about Henry. "This guy would chew you up and spit you out . . . He's not at all what you need," says Gomez (p.436). Can we simply chalk those warnings up to jealousy, or might the observers be correct? Is Henry more ruthless and amoral than he appears to Clare? How do you interpret Henry's statement: "I'm not exactly the man she's known from earliest childhood. I'm a close approximation she is guiding surreptitiously toward a me that exists in her mind's eye" (pp. 152-153)?

These comments were certainly not made out of jealousy. Yes, Gomez was secretly in love with Clare, and yes, Celia wanted Henry's ex-girlfriend Ingrid to be happy, but they each had valid reasons for warning Clare about Henry. Gomez knew Henry before Henry met Clare (but after Clare met Henry). Henry's condition forced him to live a life of crime, but besides that he had an inherently violent nature. He would suddenly find himself in a different time and a different place, completely naked and with no belongings. His only options, he felt, were to steal from and mug people. When Clare met Henry, he was already married to the future Clare, and his younger days of womanizing and drinking were over. She met the mature, solid Henry, who of course still had to deal with the time traveling, but was slightly less turbulent. So when Clare met Henry again when they were both in their twenties, that's the Henry she was expecting. Instead she met the more immature Henry, into drugs and alcohol and women. This is the Henry that Gomez and Celia knew, so their warnings to Clare were perfectly valid. However, Clare had the gift of foresight, and knew that Henry wouldn't be like this forever. She knew that eventually he would be the self-controlled, good Henry she knew when she was a girl.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #12

What is the List that Henry makes for Clare, and how does it give the book dramatic momentum? Does Niffenegger employ other devices to similar effect? One of the things that makes a story suspenseful is the reader's sense that events are reaching a climax, that time is running out. How is Niffenegger able to impart this sense to her readers, given Henry's seemingly inexhaustible supply of time?

When older Henry goes back in time to visit Clare as a young girl, he gives her a list of the dates he knows he will visit her. It gives the book dramatic momentum because Clare sees that they see each other often until she turns eighteen, and then there is a two year break. She knows that time is running out until his two year long absence, and she knows that she can't do anything about it. Niffenegger unveils the fact that Henry dies at the age of forty three early on in the book. At first I was surprised and thought that it was a poor choice on her part to take away all of the surprise and let us know so early, but then I realized that what she was doing was building tension until the end. We knew when Henry was going to die, so every chapter we knew we were getting a little bit closer until the end. Henry, Clare, nor us could do anything about it. Henry, of all people, understands the impossibility of changing what he knows will happen. He even saw how he would die. This sort of hopelessness drives the book. Henry gets to see glimpses of how the future will be, and he knows he can't do anything about it.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #9

In theory Henry's time traveling should make him omniscient--at least as far as his own timeline is concerned--but Clare knows things about him that he does not. What accounts for this? What role does the characters' knowledge--and the gaps in their knowledge--play in the novel?

When Clare first met Henry, she was six and he was around thirty six. When Henry first met Clare, she was twenty and he was twenty eight. Because of this, they never got to meet each other for a first time. They never got to meet each other without one of them already knowing the other. When Clare met Henry when she was six, he was coming from the future where he and grown up Clare were already married. When Henry met Clare for the first time, he had never seen her before, even though she had known him for years, they had been friends and then lovers. It's almost as if they had to have multiple relationships with different versions of themselves. Henry would go from Clare his wife, to Clare the six year old. He of course couldn't talk about the same things with Clare as a six year old as he could with Clare his wife, or do the same things, because that would be horribly inappropriate and illegal. It also posed difficulties for them in Clare's teenage years, because Henry would visit her one day as a 40 year old, and then the next day as a 30 year old, and Clare would have to try her best to keep track of what this Henry knew about her. They couldn't really carry a conversation from one day to the next because she might be talking to a Henry who hadn't had that conversation with her yet. If it were me, I would have been extremely frustrated with the situation.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #3

Niffenegger portrays Henry's time traveling as the result of a genetic disorder, which is explained at some length later on. How plausible is this explanation--not from a scientific point of view, but from a dramatic or literary one? Do you think that Henry's condition requires an explanation?

I think that from a literary perspective, the reader has to sort of look past any discrepancies in the explanation of Henry's condition because, obviously, time travel doesn't make scientific sense. Nothing Niffenegger could have said would have made the reader believe that it was possible, but she effectively convinces the reader that it's not necessary to know the intricacies of Henry's disorder. From a literary perspective, Niffenegger gives us just enough information for it to be plausible in our minds, as long as we didn't think too hard about it. I think Henry's condition definitely requires an explanation for the story to have depth and substance. It would be very difficult for Henry's character to be believable if we never saw him ask questions and wonder about why he is the way he is. From that perspective, Henry's condition needs a scientific explanation. In order for the audience to recognize Henry as a real person, he needs to go through steps that a real person would. If a real person realized they time traveled uncontrollably, they would also want to go to a doctor, research the reasons behind it, try to find a way to stop it. The explanation of Henry's condition doesn't serve to convince the reader that time travel is plausible, it serves to provide depth to Henry's character.

Reading Group Guide questions from the back of the book #1

On the novel's first page Clare declares, "I wait for Henry." In what way does this define her character, and how is the theme of waiting developed throughout the book?

Throughout the book, Clare waits. She waits for Henry, she waits for a child, she waits for inspiration for her art. Most prominently, however, she waits for Henry. Henry uncontrollably time travels, and he can be gone anywhere from minutes to days. When Clare was a girl, in between the ages of six and eighteen, Henry gave her a list of the dates he would return and meet her in the meadow (he knew the dates because he was travelling into the past and already knew). Clare waits in between times, which can be months apart. While he is gone, Clare can do nothing but wait with clothes for him for when he returns. He might return happy and healthy, or scared, bloody and beaten. She has no way of knowing what awaits her with Henry's return. Waiting is a prominent theme in the novel, and many characters wait. Besides Clare, there is Gomez, who is in love with Clare and waiting until something happens to Henry, until Henry is out of the picture. Henry waits, as well. He waits in between time travels to go back in time to see his mother before her death and to see his father before he succumbed to depression and alcoholism. Henry waits until his demise at the age of 43. He witnessed his death by travelling into the future, and he knew it would come. The theme of waiting is so prominent in this novel because that is all its characters can do. There is no free will, as Henry says, "there is only free will when you are in time, in the present." For Henry, much of his time is spent in the past, and he knows from experience that he cannot change what has already happened. No matter what he tries, the outcome will always be the same. Therefore, the characters can't change anything; all they can do is wait for the predetermined outcome.

Comment on the perspective from which the book is told and how the author's choice affects your relationship with the book's content.

I finished An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams and am now reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

The Time Traveler's Wife is the story of Henry DeTamble, a time traveler, and his wife Clare Abshire. The story follows their relationship from the time they met until the present. While in reality the two were born only eight years apart, due to the fact that Henry can time travel, or rather, he randomly and uncontrollably time travels, they sometimes are in each other's presence when there are around thirty years between them. When they first met, Clare was six and Henry was around 35. Throughout Clare's life, Henry time travels to her era and the two become friends and later on lovers. The story is told from both Clare and Henry's perspectives throughout. Thee story begins and is told from Clare's six year old self, and as she ages the perspective changes. Henry sometimes time travels back to when he was a young boy, so in the same chapter we get the same scene being told by both 30 year old Henry and 9 year old Henry. This change of perspectives and ages and times is confusing at first; it is hard to grasp what has already happened to the characters and what the reader knows will happen but has not in actuality happened yet. However, the perspective does provide the reader with the differences between the same character as an adult and as a child. Niffenegger successfully creates these differences in character to strengthen their personalities.

If the purpose is implicit, tell what you think the purpose of the book is and why.

Terry Tempest Williams' purpose is to share her intimate relationship with nature with her audience and perhaps remind them of their possible relationship with nature. I think that she wants her audience to glimpse something of what they could feel towards nature. The back of the book reads: "Through the grace of her stories we come to see how a lack of intimacy with the natural world has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other." I think that that hints at her purpose as well. Through her essays, Williams wants her readers to understand that being close with nature opens the door to be close with human beings on a deeper level. I also think she's sort of trying to guilt trip her readers, or maybe just make them jealous of her profound link to all things wild. She wants them to recognize all that they take for granted in the world. She wants them to want to have the same connection she does with the earth. She writes about not just appreciation and respect for nature, but about deep and profound love and intimacy for it. Her purpose is to convey the importance of that type of intimate relationship to her readers, and if possible convince them to have a connection like it with nature. She wants to start of flood of naturalists who care as deeply as she does.

Pay attention to word choice--how is the author shaping your judgement by the words he/she chooses

I finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and am now reading An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field by Terry Tempest Williams.

In her book, Terry Tempest Williams writes about her experiences and intimacy with the natural world. Her book is a celebration of everything in nature, and she chooses her words very carefully to convey her purpose to her readers.

"It is time for us to take off our masks, to step out from behind our personas--whatever they might be: educators, activists, biologists, geologists, writers, farmers, ranchers and bureaucrats--and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place. Loving the land. Honoring its mysteries. Acknowledging, embracing the spirit of place--there is nothing more legitimate and there is nothing more true."

Williams paid very careful attention to her word choice in this particular passage. The phrase "erotics of place" stands out to the reader because the words are ones that we hear often, but not in that context. They make the reader ponder what Williams wants him or her to grasp out of that phrase. I'm still not positive what she means by that, but I think she just wants the reader to understand the intimacy and sensuality of her relationship with nature. In this passage, I also noticed her usage of the word "legitimate." The definition of legitimate in this context is "not spurious or unjustified; genuine." Through her choice of "legitimate" instead of another word, Williams tells us that there is nothing more justified or authentic than loving the land. This conveys an image of justification and truth for the reader.

What is the author's dominant method of communication--dialogue, description, narration, exposition, inclusion of others' texts--?

Leif Enger uses mostly dialogue, description and narration in Peace Like a River. Everything is from the perspective of Reuben Land, who is an adult looking back at the time he was eleven years old. The story is a narrative, obviously, so most of what Reuben says is simple description of what happened, who said what, and how he felt about it. It is interesting, I think, to see how Leif Enger creates Reuben as an eleven year old boy throughout the story, but it is written in past tense and at the end of the book the audience truly comes to recognize that Reuben is an adult writing about his life at eleven years old. Everything Reuben experienced Enger relates to the audience through a much younger perspective. It is almost like Enger takes on an entirely different persona than his own, and then through that persona tries to figure out how that person would be like as a young boy. It seems quite complicated.

Enger's most convincing passages, I think, were the ones in which Reuben related both facts and emotions, not just one or the other, such as when he described the miracles he witnessed his father perform. If Reuben provided just facts about seeing his father walk on air, the audience would draw their own conclusions without necessarily the depth that Enger wished them to. If Reuben didn't describe the scene with lots of details and only provided how the incident made him feel, the audience would have nothing to base their opinions on and find him incredible. Enger found the right ratio of facts to emotion. He provided, step-by-step, what Reuben witnessed, and then he described how compelled Reuben was through that incident. It was almost as if Enger led us to draw our own conclusions, but based on what we were given, we had to believe Reuben.

Did the book come to a satisfactory closure for you? Why/not?

Peace Like a River did not come to a satisfactory closure for me. I finished reading and was not happy with the outcome. I thought it was horribly unfair for the father to die. I thought it was horribly unfair that Roxanna had been married to the father for only three months when her husband died, and she was left to take care of Reuben and Swede all by herself. I didn't like it that Davy continued to be an outlaw and could never really be with his family ever again. The only thing I was satisfied with was that Davy would let Reuben run into him every once in a while. Except, he never let Swede find him, which I also thought was horribly unfair. I am the youngest sibling, and if my sister was estranged from our family and only ever met with my brothers I would be very upset, so I can relate to Swede in that regard. I was also unsatisfied with the fact that Jape Waltzer shot the father and Reuben, then ran away and was never found. I understand that Leif Enger couldn't just write a happy ending where everything good happened, that wouldn't be realistic or effective, but I still found the end of the book unsatisfactory.

Does the author seem to have a friendly, unfriendly, or some other type of relationship with the audience? Why do you think so?

I think that Leif Enger has a very friendly relationship with the audience. He wants to share Reuben's miracles with his audience. Enger speaks from Reuben's point of view and he always sounds like he really wants the audience to understand and side with Reuben. Reuben is a young, asthmatic boy who believes in miracles and is nice to his sister. I think that Enger's choice to make his hero this likable was an attempt to bring the audience in and make them want to have a friendly relationship with the content of the book. Now that I think about it, however, I can't imagine a scenario in which an author would have an unfriendly relationship with the audience. If I am reading a book and I feel like the author is being mean to me, I am going to stop reading it. That reminds me of the beginning of The Hobbit that we looked at in class a while ago and noticed that J.R.R. Tolkein used lots of tools to put his audience on his side. That is what Enger did also, by creating a character whom the audience finds endearing and friendly.

If the purpose is implicit, tell what you think the purpose of the book is and why.

I finished How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis and am now reading Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.

I am not really sure what I think is the purpose of this book yet; I will try to work it out as I write this. I don't know very much about Leif Enger's personal life or background, but I feel like he must be somewhat similar to Reuben Land, the main character, in order for him to have captured his character, fears, beliefs, personality, and experiences so fully. I'm not saying that I believe that Enger went on a cross-country trek with his religious father and poet sister to find his outlaw brother, but from my experience authors write about things that are familiar to them. I bet that Enger grew up with a religious background, as his book carries this religious theme of faith and miracles. He most likely knew someone like Swede who had an innate gift for storytelling as well as poetry and meter. I would also guess that he did have an older brother, to whom he always looked up but maybe shouldn't have. So based on what I know about the book and what I can infer about Enger himself, I feel that the purpose of his book is to inform his readers about things he believes in, i.e. miracles, faith, family, morality. I am not a religious person. To me personally, it felt like he was trying to convince me of these religious things he experienced. It felt like he was trying to turn me, a skeptic, into a believer. I don't necessarily think that was his goal in writing it, but I do think his goal had to do with teaching his audience about these things that he believes in.

What has the writer done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the book’s content?

Jacob Riis uses a combination of statistics, facts, and personal examples to engage the reader. His goal is to engage the reader to such an extreme level that the reader feels compelled to do something about the issue at hand. His most effective method of engaging the reader I felt was his anecdotes about real people living in the tenements. He told stories about mothers so destitute that they could not care for their children and left them on the doorsteps of wealthier households. He told a story about two elderly sisters who had made their livings as seamstresses, but now were going blind and could not work. With no family to take care of them, the only option left for them was to wait until starvation took over. For me, I was most affected when I could picture a face of the people actually going through these tragedies and hardships. Riis also sometimes used statistics, saying X % of people in tenements make under Y dollars a month. These numbers were arbitrary to me; I am reading this book in the 21st century when it was written in the 19th. Inflation has occurred; rent on a tenement no longer is 12 dollars a month. I have nothing to compare that to and those numbers are meaningless to me. Of course, I understand that Riis did not write this book with the expectation that people would read it over one hundred years later and he did not have that in mind when putting in his statistics. His goal was for his readers to become aware of the atrocities occurring in the New York tenements, and for his purpose hard cold facts would do the job very nicely.