Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Help, Thanks, Wow:
1. Do you consider Help, Thanks, Wow a helpful guide to prayer? Did you pray (at all? regularly?) before you read Lamott's book? Has the book changed your attitude toward prayer or altered your practice of prayer?
2. What is prayer and what is its purpose? What does Lamott suggest prayer is? What do you pray for?
3. Why does Lamott believe that powerlessness is a spiritual condition? Have you ever felt overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness in your life?
4. Is this a religious book? A spiritual book? Does it clash with or conform to your beliefs?
5. Comment on Anne Lamott's belief in gratitude:
Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always make you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.
Is practicing gratitude easy for you personally? When life is difficult, how does Lamott think we find gratitude, and why is it important? Are there times when you feel it's impossible to be grateful?
6. Do you find Lamott's irreverence toward God disturbing or refreshing? She refers to God sometimes as "She," and feels that God shouldn't mind when we say we're angry at Him/Her because things aren't going well for us.
7. What does Lamott mean when she quotes C.S. Lewis's line that says, [prayer] "doesn't change God. It changes me." Do you agree or disagree?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, on line or off, with attribution. Thanks.)