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 The Ride of Our Lives:
1. What motivates Leonard to organize this road trip with his parents and children across the U.S? Would you have dared to attempt this with your own family?
2. In literature, as far back as The Odyssey, books about journeys represent a journey of self-discovery. Even though Leonard's trip is a real cross-country road-trip, in what way does he present it as the classic fictional "journey"? Who learns what...about whom?
3. How would you enjoy traveling with Leonard's parents? Talk about Jack and Marge—as characters, as well as parents and grandparents. How do you explain their affection for one another when they seem so incompatible as a married couple?
4. Where are the fault-lines in this family? Where do they fall—between Leonard and his parents...or Leonard and his kids? What is the nature of—and reason for—so-called "generational gaps"? Why do they occur in almost every family, most likely even your own? Speculate on why grandparents and grandchildren seem to get along so well.
5. What does Leonard learn about his parents—for instance, his mother's alcoholic father...his father's childhood trip to Ireland?
6. What were Mike Leonard's own struggles as a child? How did he overcome them? Would it have been different (easier... harder) in today's world? How did his experiences shape his life as a broadcast journalist?
7. Pick out the passages you found particularly funny...and talk about them. Also, those passages that your found most poignant—perhaps Jack and Marge's visit to their college campuses...or their old neighborhood in New Jersey.
8. What was most appealing to you about the places that the Leonard family visited—perhaps the B&B in the Bayou country where the sign says" Pick a room. Take a key. We'll see you for breakfast"? Any others? How did you feel about the diversity and quirkiness of the U.S. after reading this book? Make you want to take a road-trip?
9. Care to make comparisons between the Leonard family and your own?
10. What does this work suggest, if anything, about growing old in the 21st century?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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