The End of Your Life Book Club
Will Schwalbe, 2012
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307594037
Summary
“What are you reading?”
That’s the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, often in six months or less.
This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother, who start a “book club” that brings them together as her life comes to a close. Over the next two years, Will and Mary Anne carry on conversations that are both wide-ranging and deeply personal, prompted by an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading. Their list jumps from classic to popular, from poetry to mysteries, from fantastic to spiritual. The issues they discuss include questions of faith and courage as well as everyday topics such as expressing gratitude and learning to listen. Throughout, they are constantly reminded of the power of books to comfort us, astonish us, teach us, and tell us what we need to do with our lives and in the world. Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.
Will and Mary Anne share their hopes and concerns with each other—and rediscover their lives—through their favorite books. When they read, they aren’t a sick person and a well person, but a mother and a son taking a journey together. The result is a profoundly moving tale of loss that is also a joyful, and often humorous, celebration of life: Will’s love letter to his mother, and theirs to the printed page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Will Schwalbe has worked in publishing (most recently as senior vice president and editor in chief of Hyperion Books); digital media, as the founder and CEO of Cookstr.com; and as a journalist, writing for various publications including The New York Times and the South China Morning Post. He is on the boards of Yale University Press and the Kingsborough Community College Foundation. He is the coauthor, with David Shipley, of Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Sharing books he loved with his savvy New Yorker mom had always been a great pleasure for both mother and son, becoming especially poignant when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2007, at age 73. Schwalbe, founder of Cookstr.com and former editor-in-chief of Hyperion, along with his father and siblings, was blindsided by the news; his mother, Mary Ann Schwalbe, had been an indomitable crusader for human rights, once the director of admissions at Harvard, and a person of enormous energy and management skills. Could a book club be run by only two people? Schwalbe and his mother wondered as they waited together over many chemotherapy sessions at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. It didn’t matter: “Books showed us that we didn’t need to retreat or cocoon,” he writes; they provided “much-needed ballast” during an emotionally tumultuous time when fear and uncertainty gripped them both as the dreaded disease (“not curable but treatable”) progressed rapidly. From Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey to Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar, Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book to John Updike’s My Father’s Tears: the books they shared allowed them to speak honestly and thoughtfully, to get to know each other, ask big questions, and especially talk about death. With a refreshing forthrightness, and an excellent list of books included, this is an astonishing, pertinent, and wonderfully welcome work.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This touching and insightful memoir [will] appeal to readers of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Last Lecture, but also to people who love delving into books and book discussions.... While it is a story about death, it is mostly a celebration of life and of the way books can enrich it.
Booklist
Schwalbe (co-author: Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, 2007) chronicles his book-related conversations with his mother after she was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Books provided the author with much-needed ballast during the chaos and upheaval of his mother's terminal illness.... Books provided an avenue for the author and his mother to explore important topics that made them uneasy.... Each chapter holds a subtle message fleshed out through their readings and discussions, and themes include gratitude, loneliness, feminism, faith, communication, trust and grief. In a heartfelt tribute to his mother, Schwalbe illustrates the power of the written word to expand our knowledge of ourselves and others.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Does this book have a central theme? What is it?
2. Why does Mary Anne always read a book’s ending first? How does this reflect her character?
3. Early in the book, Will writes, “I wanted to learn more about my mother’s life and the choices she’d made, so I often steered the conversation there. She had an agenda of her own, as she almost always did. It took me some time, and some help, to figure it out.” (page 6) What was Mary Anne’s agenda?
4. Mary Anne underlined a passage in Seventy Verses on Emptiness, which resonated with Will: “Permanent is not; impermanent is not; a self is not; not a self [is not]; clean is not; not clean is not; happy is not; suffering is not.” Why did this strike both of them as significant? What do you think it means?
5. Throughout the book, Will talks about books as symbols and sources of hope. How has reading books served a similar function for you?
6. While reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, Will and Mary Anne discuss three kinds of fateful choices: “the ones characters make knowing that they can never be undone; the ones they make thinking they can but learn they can’t; and the ones they make thinking they can’t and only later come to understand, when it’s too late, when ‘nothing can be undone,’ that they could have.” (page 41) What kind of choices did Mary Anne make during her cancer treatment? Did she or Will make any of the third type?
7. Mary Anne especially liked a passage from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson: “When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?” (page 96) Why do you think this moved her so much? What did it mean to Will?
8. How does religious belief help Mary Anne? How do you think it might have helped Will?
9. Mary Anne doesn’t believe her travels to war-torn countries were brave: “I wanted to go to all those places, so how could that be brave? The people I’m talking about, they did things they didn’t want to do because they felt they had to, or because they thought it was the right thing to do.” (page 167) In what ways is Mary Anne brave during her cancer treatments? Does she ever come to think of herself as brave?
10. Will is amazed by his mother’s ability to continue her efforts to fund the library in Afghanistan even while facing a death sentence, until he realizes that “she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done. I had to learn this lesson while she was still there to teach me.” (page 194) Did Will learn? What makes you think so?
11. Why did Mary Anne become so intent on certain things happening: Obama’s election, David Rohde’s safe return? Will talks about his own “magical thinking” several times in the book—what form do you think Mary Anne’s took?
12. “We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.” (page 281) How did this realization affect Will’s final days with his mom?
13. After she dies, Will looks at Mary Anne’s copy of Daily Strength for Daily Needs, next to the bed. He believes this quote from John Ruskin was the last thing his mother ever read: “If you do not wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it.” (page 321) How did Mary Anne work for it throughout her life? Do you think Will found solace in this passage?
14. Several times in the book, Will talks about eBooks versus their physical counterparts. Why does he prefer one to the other? Does Mary Anne agree? If you read this book on an eReader, how do you think it affected your experience?
15. Which of the books discussed by Will and Mary Anne have you read? Which do you most want to read?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Joseph Anton
Salman Rushdie, 2012
Random House
656 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812992786
Summary
On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran.”
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton.
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.
It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 19, 1947
• Where—Bombay, Maharashtra, India
• Education—M.A., King's College, Cambridge, UK
• Awards—Booker Prize, 1981 (named the best novel to win
the Booker Prize in its first twenty-five years in 1993);
Whitbread Prize, 1988 and 1995
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions and migrations between East and West.
His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries, some violent. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on February 14, 1989.
Rushdie was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at the Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the Satanic Verses controversy.
Career
Rushdie's first career was as a copywriter, working for the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, where he came up with "irresistibubble" for Aero and "Naughty but Nice" for cream cakes, and for the agency Ayer Barker, for whom he wrote the memorable line "That'll do nicely" for American Express. It was while he was at Ogilvy that he wrote Midnight's Children, before becoming a full-time writer. John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty has criticised Rushdie for not referring to his copywriting past frequently enough, although conceding: "He did write crap ads...admittedly."
His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight's Children, catapulted him to literary notability. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie. However, the author has refuted the idea of having written any of his characters as autobiographical, stating...
People assume that because certain things in the character are drawn from your own experience, it just becomes you. In that sense, I’ve never felt that I’ve written an autobiographical character.
After Midnight's Children, Rushdie wrote Shame, in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Indian diaspora.
Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called The Jaguar Smile. This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor's Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India's history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist. He also wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990.
Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In his 2002 non-fiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.
His latest novel is Luka and the Fire of Life, published in November 2010. Earlier in the same year, he announced that he was writing his memoirs, entitled Joseph Anton: A Memoir, which was published in September 2012.
In 2012, Salman Rushdie became one of the first major authors to embrace Booktrack (a company that synchronises ebooks with customised soundtracks) when he published his short story "In the South" on the platform.
Other Activities
Rushdie has quietly mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He has received many plaudits for his writings, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), and the Writer of the Year Award in Germany and many of literature's highest honours. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers.
In 2007 he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives.
In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he later realised in his frequent cameo appearances).
Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones's Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On May 12, 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt's obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation of Elinor Lipman's novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panellist on the HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher.
Rushdie is currently collaborating on the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children with director Deepa Mehta. The film will be released in October, 2012.
Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation which provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Satanic Verses and the fatwa
The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic" verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
On February 14, 1989, a fatwa requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam." A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for several years. On March 7, 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.
The publication of the book and the fatwa sparked violence around the world, with bookstores firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies, burning copies of the book. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked and even killed.
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government gave a public commitment that it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie."
Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini's fatwa was reaffirmed by Iran's current spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.
Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat."
A memoir of his years of hiding, Joseph Anton, was published in 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias.
In 2012, following uprisings over an anonymously posted YouTube video denigrating Muslims, a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million dollars. Their stated reason: "If the [1989] fatwa had been carried out, later insults in the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not happened."
Knighthood
Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on June 16, 2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognised in this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim majorities protested. Several called publicly for his death. Some non-Muslims expressed disappointment at Rushdie's knighthood, claiming that the writer did not merit such an honour and there were several other writers who deserved the knighthood more than Rushdie.
Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour. The Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam", and it was planning "a very precise response."
Religious Beliefs
Rushdie came from a Muslim family though he is an atheist now. In 1990, in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him," he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world. However, Rushdie later said that he was only "pretending".
Personal Life
Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar (born 1980). His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from 1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan (born 1999). In 2004, he married the Indian American actress and model Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American reality-television show Top Chef. The marriage ended on July 2, 2007, with Lakshmi indicating that it was her desire to end the marriage.
In 1999 Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a tendon condition that causes drooping eyelids and that, according to him, was making it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have been able to open my eyes at all," he said.
Since 2000, Rushdie has "lived mostly near Union Square" in New York City. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Joseph Anton] reminds us of [Rushdie's] fecund gift for language and his talent for explicating the psychological complexities of family and identity... [A] harrowing, deeply felt and revealing document: an autobiographical mirror of the big, philosophical preoccupations that have animated Mr. Rushdie's work throughout his career, from the collision of the private and the political in today's interconnected world to the permeable boundaries between life and art, reality and the imagination.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Joseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year. Some may complain that, at more than 600 pages, it is too long, but it never seemed so to me…To the contrary, the length of the book, and its wealth of quotidian detail, serve to draw the reader into the life that Rushdie was forced to lead, to make his isolation and fear palpable.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post
Rushdie’s ideas—about society, about culture, about politics—are embedded in his stories and in the interlocking momentum with which he tells them.... All of Rushdie’s synthesizing energy, the way he brings together ancient myth and old story, contemporary incident and archetypal emotion, transfigures reason into a waking dream.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Everywhere [Rushdie] takes us there is both love and war, in strange and terrifying combinations, painted in swaying, swirling, world-eating prose that annihilates the borders between East and West, love and hate, private lives and the history they make.
Time
Swift in Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire in Candide, Sterne in Tristram Shandy.... Salman Rushdie, it seems to me, is very much a latter-day member of their company.
New York Times Book Review
Hailed as a literary martyr and derided as a prima donna, Rushdie emerges as both inspiring and insufferable in this memoir of his life following the 1989 fatwa issued against him by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. The British-Indian novelist's third-person account of the firestorm surrounding The Satanic Verses is harrowing as he's hounded, under the pseudonym "Joseph Anton," and moved from one hiding place to another under constant police guard while Islamists everywhere call for his death, and the British government treats him as an undeserving troublemaker. (Bookstore bombings and murderous attacks on a publisher and translators, he notes, show how serious the threat was.) But once Rushdie regains his nerve, his fetters accommodate much jet-setting lionization as he travels the world, collects awards and ovations, and parties with glitterati at the Playboy Mansion. Rushdie mixes stirring defenses of free speech with piquant observations on the subculture of maniacal high-level security, ripostes to detractors and ex-wives—"when he mentioned a pre-nup, the conversation became a quarrel"—sex gossip and incessant name-dropping ("Willie Nelson was there! And Matthew Modine!"). There's preening self-dramatization by the celebrity author— but a persistent edge of real drama, and fear, makes Rushdie's story absorbing.
Publishers Weekly
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 Joseph Anton:
1. How would you describe Salman Rushdie's personality in this memoir? Do you find him self-effacing...grandiose...self-pitying...or refreshingly honest? How do you see him?
2. The memoir is written in the third-person, an unusual perspective for memoirs, which are usually first-person accounts. Why might Rushdie have used this point-of-view?
3. In the first few pages, Rushdie compares the fatwa against him to the first bird that appears in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds. He sees the fatwa as a harbinger of more violence to come—even a precursor to 9/11. Do you agree? Or is he overstating his case? Was the fatwa against Rushdie the leading edge of Islamic anger at the West...or did violence exist prior to The Satanic Verses?
4. Talk about the extreme security precautions Rushdie had to take and what it was like for him. How well would you have coped under such pressure? What did he find most difficult? What would you have found most difficult?
5. Trace the psychological toll the fatwa took on Rushdie—his fear, anger, despair. What does he mean when he talks about "the divide between what 'Rushdie' needed to do and how 'Salman' wanted to live"? How did the fatwa bring to the surface Rushdie's need for coming to terms with the past, his need for love, his basic assumptions about life?
6. Talk about Rushdie's complicated relationship with his father. How did his father influence the man Salman Rushdie became?
7. What are Rushdie's views on religion? How do his religious view dovetail with—or differ from—your own?
8. How does the Islamic world view The Satanic Verses? Why is it considered blasphemous? What is Rushdie's own view of the book? In what way does he say that the work is a "much more personal, interior exploration" than, say, Midnight's Children?
9. Rushdie considers the fatwa, as "a terrorist act that had to be confronted." He believes the world's leaders had and have an obligation to "defend his right to be a troublemaker." Do you agree?
10. (Follow-up to Question 9) In September, 2012, the very month that Jospeh Anton was published, a film derogatory to Islam and Mohammed, produced by a small group in California, was released on Youtube. Considered blasphemous, the film inflamed Muslim anger throughout the Middle East. Should there be limits to the freedom of artistic speech? Criticism of religions is illegal in Germany, for instance. In the U.S. and other Western countries, however, free speech is granted almost absolute protection. Is it a government's responsibility to protect authors like Rushdie, cartoonists in the Netherlands, or film producers in California, who allegedly blaspheme religions? What do you think?
11. (Follow-up to Questions 3, 9 and 10 ) On September 16, 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation announced it was re-instating the fatwa on Rushdie, offering $3.3 million reward to whoever would assassinate him. Their reasoning for doing so is as follows:
As long as the exalted Imam Khomeini's historical fatwa against apostate Rushdie is not carried out, it won't be the last insult. If the [1989] fatwa had been carried out, later insults in the form of caricature, articles and films that have continued would have not happened.
Did the fact that Rushdie escaped death under the fatwa—and that the fatwa was later rescinded—embolden others to insult Islam?
12. Talk about Salman Rushdie's understanding of the power of literature and its place in the world. Why does he see literature as vital for global peace? Does that place too great a burden on literature?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden
Mark Owen, 2012
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525953722
Summary
For the first time anywhere, the first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy Seal who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moment
From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden’s compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—commonly known as SEAL Team Six—has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines.
No Easy Day puts readers alongside Owen and the other handpicked members of the twenty-four-man team as they train for the biggest mission of their lives. The blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death, is an essential piece of modern history.
In No Easy Day, Owen also takes readers onto the field of battle in America’s ongoing War on Terror and details the selection and training process for one of the most elite units in the military. Owen’s story draws on his youth in Alaska and describes the SEALs’ quest to challenge themselves at the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. With boots-on-the-ground detail, Owen describes numerous previously unreported missions that illustrate the life and work of a SEAL and the evolution of the team after the events of September 11.
In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Mark Owen is a former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six. In his many years as a Navy SEAL, he has participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009.
Owen was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 1 May 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind's hideout, where he witnessed bin Laden's death. Mark Owen's name and the names of the other SEALs mentioned in this book have been changed for their security. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The emphasis of...No Easy Day....is not on spilling secrets. It is on explaining a SEAL's rigorous mind-set and showing how that toughness is created. The bin Laden story is the marquee event in No Easy Day, of course. But the formative steps in the author's own story are just as gripping.... Mr. Owen's new information about the Abbottabad attack adds a human element to much of what has been previously reported. Even reporting like Peter L. Bergen's in his meticulous book Manhunt does not have this new book's perspective. Mr. Bergen knew what the men had done, but this author knows what at least one of them was thinking.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
The writing is fast-paced, and Owen and Maurer tell some good yarns in a conversational style. They also neatly capture the camaraderie, the pranks, the constant training and the evident love that the men of SEAL Team 6 have for their jobs.
Washington Post
Make no mistake: No Easy Day is an important historic document. Think if we had a first-person account of the last minutes of Hitler in his bunker. No Easy Day is brisk and compelling in its telling of the training, execution and immediate aftermath of the Bin Laden mission by the elite Seal Team Six.
Los Angeles Times
A cast of characters, including Owen himself, artfully drawn, yet painfully human, passionate descriptions of a lifestyle that few are privy to, as well as its breathlessly paced, inexorable march toward an inevitable ending.... [I]t's a remarkably intimate glimpse into what motivates men striving to join an elite fighting force like the SEALS—and what keeps them there.
Associated Press
The book is a stomach-twisting close-up look at that historic mission in Abbottabad, told from the point of view of a super-elite member of SEAL Team Six who fired a bullet into bin Laden and helped carry away the corpse. Written in clean, polished prose... No Easy Day often reads like a gripping novel as the author recounts remarkably vivid details... No Easy Day puts you right there for every tense moment.
Entertainment Weekly
[Mark Owen] has given us a brave retelling of one of the most important events in U.S. military history.
People
The arch-terrorist's death was "just another job," according to this gung-ho memoir by a member of the U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six that dispatched him. The pseudonymous Owen's (revealed by Fox News to be Matt Bissonnette) story is “generalized" and scrubbed of “classified information" but authentic enough to provoke Pentagon legal threats and convey a compelling realism. His meticulous narrative of the raid adds new wrinkles to the conventional account—he insists that Bin Laden did not try to fight or hide behind his wives before he was shot, unarmed, while peeking through a doorway (Owen sneers at his unpreparedness)—along with atmospheric details, from the terror of an initial helicopter crash to his cleaning of blood from Bin Laden's face for identifying photos. The raid caps Owen's well-observed memoir of training ordeals, awesome gear, bonding and banter, and special ops in Iraq and Afghanistan; co-author Maurer shapes these missions into tense scenes of strategizing, stealth and action. This is not a reflective book; the righteousness of post-9/11 military adventures is self-evident to Owen, and he worries only about measuring up to the SEAL standard of lethal teamwork. Still, it paints an absorbing portrait of the work-a-day soldierly professionalism that proved Bin Laden's nemesis. Photos.
Publishers Weekly
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 No Easy Day:
1. Why has "Mark Owen" written this book—what was his purpose? Is this a "tell-all" account...or something else?
2. Talk about the Navy SEALs—their mindset and toughness. What makes them different from other branches of the military? In fact, how does Team 6 differ from the other SEAL teams? Why was this particular team chosen for the attack on bin Laden's compound?
3. How does one become a SEAL—what qualities are looked for in a potential SEAL?
4. Talk about the training, physical and mental, that prepares SEALs for the road ahead.
5. What about the book's title, "No easy day"? It refers to a SEAL saying that "the only easy day was yesterday." Talk about the meaning of that sentence—what does it suggest about the SEALs?
6. How did Owen's own background shape his career? What was it about the book, Men in Green Faces, that inspired Owen?
7. Talk about the men's camaraderie among the men in SEAL Team 6. What causes the tight bonds? Do other military services have the same personal ties?
8. How does the information in this book either jibe with or differ from other accounts of the Abbottabad attack that you've either read or heard?
9. Talk about the intelligence, or lack of intelligence, regarding the Abbottabad hideout. Although CIA analysist Jen says she is "one hundred percent" certain that bin Laden was hiding there, could she be truly sure? Why...or why not?
10. What is Owen's reaction when he finds that bin Laden's guns were not loaded? He says "There is no honor in sending people to die for something you won't even fight for yourself." Do you find that an accurate, true, or distorted statement of bin Laden...or, indeed, of any leader?
11. During a rehearsal of the attack, a lawyer tells the SEALs that if bin Laden "is naked with his hands up, you're not going to engage him.... You will detain him." Why was that procedure not followed. Should it have been? What might have happened had bin Laden been captured alive?
12. Were you shocked by the men's (including Owen's) handling, of the "dead weight" of bin Laden's body? Do bin Laden's remains deserve respectful treatment...or not? What does their handling of the body suggest about the SEAL's attitude toward bin Laden and toward their jobs in general?
13. After the attack, how did the SEALs react to the President's press conference? What were they concerned might happen during the announcement? Why did the announcement feel anticlimactic?
14. What have you learned—about the SEALS, the operation, or the actual attack—that you did't know before reading No Easy Day.
15. Does this book live up to expectations? Even knowing the outcome, did you find it suspenseful? How so...or why not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, onlne or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
End of Men: And the Rise of Women
Hanna Rosin, 2012
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594488047
Summary
A landmark portrait of women, men, and power in a transformed world.
Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But Hanna Rosin was the first to notice that this long-held truth is, astonishingly, no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, by almost every measure, women are no longer gaining on men: They have pulled decisively ahead. And “the end of men”—the title of Rosin’s Atlantic cover story on the subject—has entered the lexicon as dramatically as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” once did.
In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how this new state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Israel
• Education—B.A., Stanford University
• Currently—Lives in Washington, D.C., USA
Rosin was born in Israel and grew up in Queens, where her father is a taxi driver. She graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1987, where she won a number of competitions on the debate team. She attended Stanford University, and is married to Slate editor David Plotz; they live in Washington, D.C. with their three children.
Hanna Rosin is a co-founder of DoubleX, a women's site connected to the online magazine Slate. She is also a writer for The Atlantic. She has written for the Washington Post, The New Yorker, GQ and New York after beginning her career as a staff writer for The New Republic. Rosin has also appeared on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.
A character portrayed by actress Chloë Sevigny in the movie Shattered Glass about Rosin's colleague at The New Republic, Stephen Glass, was loosely based on Rosin.
Rosin has published a book based on her 2010 Atlantic story, The End of Men. She gave a TED talk on the subject in 2010. In this work she details the emergence of women as a powerful force of the American workplace. For Rosin, this shifting economy has allowed women to use their most gendered stereotypical strengths to succeed. In the past she has specialized in writing about religious-political issues, in particular the influence of evangelical Christians on the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign. She is the author of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, published in 2007. Based on a New Yorker story, the book follows several young Christians at Patrick Henry College, a new evangelical institution that teaches its students to "shape the culture and take back the nation." Rosin's portrayals of the students are part of a larger attempt to chronicle the cultural and political history of the modern Christian right.
In 2009, she published a controversial article in The Atlantic with the provocative title "The Case Against Breast-Feeding," questioning whether current social pressures in favor of breastfeeding were appropriate, and whether the science in support of the practice was conclusive. In 2009 she was nominated for a National Magazine Award for "Boy's Life," a story about a young transgendered boy. In 2010 she won the award for her contribution to a package of stories in New York magazine about circumcision. Her stories have also been included in anthologies of Best American Magazine Writing 2009 and Best American Crime Reporting 2009.
On February 27, 2012, following the death of children's author Jan Berenstain, Rosen wrote an article critical of the Berenstain Bears series of books and said "good riddance" to the beloved children's author. After negative public reaction to her use of the phrase "good riddance," Rosen issued an apology. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Makes us see the larger picture...this provocative book is not so much about the end of men but the end of male supremacy...The great strength of Ms. Rosin's argument is that she shows how these changes in sex, love, ambition and work have little or nothing to do with hard-wired brain differences or supposed evolutionary destiny. They occur as a result of economic patterns, the unavailability of marriageable men, and a global transformation in the nature of work.
Wall Street Journal
Ambitious and surprising....[The End of Men is] solidly researched and should interest readers who care about feminist history and how gender issues play out in the culture.... A nuanced, sensitively reported account of how cultural and economic forces are challenging traditional gender norms and behavior.
Boston Globe
Pinpoints the precise trajectory and velocity of the culture.... Rosin’s book, anchored by data and aromatized by anecdotes, concludes that women are gaining the upper hand.
Washington Post
Refreshing...Rosin's book may be the most insightful and readable cultural analysis of the year, bringing together findings from different fields to show that economic shifts and cultural pressures mean that in many ways, men are being left behind...The End of Men is buttressed by numbers, but it's a fascinating read because it transcends them... Rosin's genius was to connect these dots in ways no one else has for an unexpected portrait of our moment. The End of Men is not really about a crisis for men; it's a crisis of American opportunity.
Los Angeles Times
Especially timely.... Rosin has her finger squarely on the pulse of contemporary culture...fresh and compelling.
USA Today
Rosin is a gifted storyteller with a talent for ferreting out volumes of illustrative data, and she paints a compelling picture of the ways women are ascendant
Time
A persuasive, research-grounded argument.... The most interesting sections in The End of Men show that in the portions of the country where, through culture and money, something like equality between the sexes is being achieved, the differences between them collapse.
Esquire
Heralds the ways current economic and societal power shifts are bringing 'the age of testosterone' to a close and the consequences.
Vanity Fair
Following up on her Atlantic cover story of two summers ago, Rosin (senior editor, Atlantic; God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission To Save America) uses the same provocative title here to show that there has been a power shift in America, with men no longer dominant. She points to the fact that many more women are wage earners and that they are more likely than men to go to college, but she does not fully consider the additional reality that women wage earners still earn substantially less than men over a lifetime and that although they have made gains as lawyers and physicians, that is a narrow segment of American workers. The fact that women are virtually invisible among electricians, plumbers and masons, although they make up more than 96 percent of secretaries, 95 percent of childcare workers, and 88 percent of health-care aides, argues against there being a major shift in gender roles in American society as a whole, as Rosin believes. Verdict: Although Rosin thinks that all we have to do is wait to encounter a complete shift in the paradigm of gender in the United States, and although she presents many observations about progress for women, the facts on the ground make her argument unpersuasive: the end of men has been widely exaggerated. Consider this an optional purchase. —Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Library Journal
Atlantic senior editor Rosin (God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, 2007), co-founder of Slate's women's section, DoubleX, argues that women are more likely than men to succeed in the modern workforce. The author conducted extensive interviews with women of various backgrounds, from the Midwest to Korea. She bases her argument partly on the flexibility of women and partly on the fact that employers are beginning to value characteristics stereotypically attributed to women, such as empathy. Rosin suggests that the world may be headed toward a matriarchy. It is refreshing to find optimism in a book about the gender gap, but in some cases it seems that women haven't progressed as much as men have fallen behind. In several of the households Rosin discusses, what has made the women the main breadwinners is not just drive, but the fact that their men don't hold steady jobs. Most of those men do not completely fulfill domestic duties either, leaving the women to work both outside and inside the home. Though she later takes up the issue of splitting household duties, Rosin glosses over it early on to paint a picture of matriarchal utopia. The author covers an impressive amount of ground about women, including the professions they dominate, how they can rise to the top, and their relationship to casual sex. Particularly interesting is Rosin's examination of female violence. She shows that as women gain power, they encompass the negative traits that were once only attributed to men, therefore countering the myth that a world ruled by women would be more peaceful. A great starting point for readers interested in exploring the intersecting issues of gender, family and employment.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In “Hearts of Steel,” Rosin depicts an extreme version of hook-up culture at an Ivy League business school. How did you feel about the women she depicts? Did you find them admirable? Off-putting? Do you view them as outliers or as trailblazers?
2. Rosin seems to agree with research showing that the hook up culture is necessary for women’s advancement. Do you? Or do you think women are getting a bad deal in their early romantic relationships?
3. If you had a daughter, what advice would you give her when she entered college?
4. If you are married, would you describe yourself as having a see-saw marriage, in which each partner gets the chance to be the main breadwinner at some point? Would you want such a marriage? What are the advantages and disadvantages for women? For men?
5. How did you feel about David Godsall, the young man in ”The See-Saw Marriage” who is resentful that his girlfriend is making more money? Do you think young men are adjusting to playing a more traditionally feminine role these days?
6. What did you think of Steven Andrews, the stay-at-home dad at the end of ”The See-Saw Marriage” chapter? Is he pulling his weight in the family?
7. In “The New American Matriarchy,” Rosin depicts the changes wrought by the decline of American manufacturing in Alexander City, Alabama. How does the image of manhood in such a place conflict with the reality? How are men and women responding to the changes? What is the effect on the younger generation coming of age in this new reality? What is lost and what is gained?
8. What did you make of the young women in ”Pharm Girls”? Do you admire the way they forge ahead? Do you think of them as feminists, even though they don’t think of themselves that way?
9. Do you think it’s true that women have more advantages in this economy than men?
10. Were you surprised that colleges were using affirmative action for white men? Do you think that such a step is warranted?
11. Why do you think women are more successful at school than men? Do you think that schools discriminate against boys?
12. The research Rosin cites in “A More Perfect Poison” suggests that the nature of female violence is changing, although the numbers of female offenders are still minuscule compared to men. Do you think women are potentially as violent as men? Why or why not?
13. In “The Top,” Rosin depicts new patterns of work in Silicon Valley, inspired to a great extent by the need to retain highly skilled women in the workforce. Do you think these patterns offer productive templates for companies everywhere? What are the advantages and disadvantages for companies? For workers?
14. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg comments that women in high places have a duty to stay there, so that they can create better policies for other women? Do you agree?
15. What do you think of the idea Rosin presents in the conclusion, that men may become more flexible as on the world around them continues to change? Have you noticed any signs of change in the culture around you? What is the next step for “Plastic Woman”?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
GPS Your Best Life: Charting Your Destination and Getting There in Style
Charmaine Hammond, Debra Kasowski, 2012
Bettie Youngs Book Publishers
165 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936332267
Summary
Bestselling author and transformational speaker Charmaine Hammond teams up with fellow speaker and founder/CEO of the Millionaire Woman Club, Debra Kasowski, to bring you a unique method for getting clear and achieving what you want in your life, your career, your relationships.
GPS Your Best Life gives you simple, practical strategies, accompanied by down to earth assessment tools. This book will put you behind the wheel to guide you from figuring out what revs your engine and what’s blocking your view, and following your unique road map to your desired destination while learning to navigate the obstacles and road blocks along the way.
You don’t have to be a motor head to appreciate the GPS step-by-step approach. Whether you’re trying to determine what you really want in life, to clarify your goals, or how to get where you want, GPS Your Best Life will help you map your destination and put you on the road to personal fulfillment, happiness, and success! (From the publisher)
Author Bio
• Charmaine Hammond, is the best selling and award winning author of the memoir On Toby's Terms (2010), about her family dog. The book is in development to be a motion picture with Impact Motion Pictures. She also co-authored GPS Your Best Life (2012)—charting your destination and getting there in style. In addition to her adult novels, Charmain has also published a series of children's books—Toby The Pet Therapy Dog & His Hospital Friends (2011), and Be a Buddy Not a Bully (2012).
Toby, the dog, has given Charmaine much to write about. From learning to put on his own seat belt, making a difference in the lives of many through his visitation at local hospitals as a therapy dog, and dressing up in a jail uniform to raise money from charity, Toby has given people much to smile about. Toby has presented in front of more than 10,000 students and some 1500 adults.
As a professional speaker in her other life, Charmaine has spoken to audiences internationally and is a sought after speaker at corporate events, conferences and author conventions. She also hosts three wildly popular radio shows.
Charmain is the winner of the 2012 Business Matchmaker of the Year award, an international award (eWomenNetwork) and has been nominated for the 2012 RBC Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
She has been featured in the Metro USA, Metro Canada, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton and Spruce Grove Examiner, Calgary and Edmonton Sun, Del Mar Times, National Post, Global TV, CTSTV, Alberta Prime Time (CTV) and on many radio stations in the US and Canada. (From the author.)
• Debra Kasowski has a BSc in Nursing and has practiced nursing for over seventeen years. She has combined her passion and love of helping people with her professional speaking career to inspire and help people transform their lives; she also leads several workshops and provides personal coaching. She is the founder of the Millionaire Woman Club, a global community of women who are highly motivated and passionate about helping women become “rich from the inside out.”
Debra is also a founding member of the Evolutionary Business Council and a transformational speaker who inspires her audiences to take action. She is published in Today’s Business Woman Magazine and has been featured on the online magazine Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, as well as radio and television media.
Debra and her husband started the “Spirit of Christmas” Shoebox program from one of her bucket list ideas. The program has recently doubled in capacity and provided gifts and breakfast to more than 1,200 children. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
Not knowing what you want is the biggest obstacle in living your best life. Charmaine and Debra take you on an exquisite journey of discovery—a discovery that has you expertly navigate through hidden fears and procrastination to embrace passion and adventure in creating your best life. I highly recommend this compelling tool that could change the direction of your life forever.
Shawne Duperon - ShawneTV (SixTime EMMY winner)
Charmaine Hammond and Debra Kasowski have created the perfect guide book and repair manual for servicing your most important vehicle - yourself. No matter where you are in your life their concepts and solid directions will help you get to a better place. It's a must read.
Ken Kragen - Author (Life Is A Contact Sport) and Organizer ("We Are The World," "Hands Across America" and other historic humanitarian events)
A very satisfying labor of love—a book by two writers about navigation into our best life. This book inspires us to follow our inner guidance to our goals.
Debbi Dachinger - Author (Dare to Dream: This Life Counts) and Radio Host ("Dare to Dream")
This book packs a powerful message. It puts you in the driver’s seat, making you an unstoppable force. If there are any areas of your life where you’re not getting the results you want, the answers to achievement can be found in these pages.
Marilyn Suttle - Author (Who’s Your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan)
If you are in a life or career transition you must read “GPS Your Best Life”. It’s like having a personal GPS for the next chapter of your life. In this book, Charmaine & Debra share simple self-analysis questionnaires and real world examples to help you discover and reach your next destination.
April Morris - Actress (Shark Tank, ABC), Product Innovation Expert, Inspirational Speaker.
This book is quick and easy to read, easy to understand and simple to follow. And best of all it really works! It helps you to focus on what you do want. If you want to be clear about your priorities and know what is important to you, read this book! This book is easy to read, easy to understand and simple to follow. And best of all it really works! If you want to be clear about your priorities and know what is important to you, this book is a must read.
Lori Raudnask
A most useful guide to charting and traversing the many options that lay before you.
Suzi Kenyon - Kenyon Communications
There are a lot of self-help books on the market, but this takes a unique, creative approach to help you figure out where you want to go in your life and how to get there, in an easy, fun, step-by-step manner.
Christine Belleris - Beyond Words, Inc.
This terrific book shows you how to focus on what you want, clear away obstacles, and chart a course to make your dreams come true. A must-read for anyone who is serious about living a life of purpose and passion.
Gail Z. Martin - Author (30 Days to Social Media Success)
A valuable guide to help you think and rethink your next move—personal and professional.
Jennifer L. Youngs - Author (7 Ways a Baby Will Change Your Life the First Year)
Discussion Questions
Each Chapter concludes with Mapping Your Way questions which are very suitable for Book Club discussions and for personal reflection.
1. In the first chapter, the authors present a personal diagnostics questionnaire to help readers understand where they perceive themselves to be now, and where they want to go. What was your experience working through these questions? Were there surprises? What stood out for you as your strengths and areas to capitalize on in your life?
2. The authors write about getting started with a clean windshield and finishing incompletes. What does this reference mean to you? What gets in the way of completing tasks or having a clean windshield in life? What do you need to finish so you can start with a clean slate?
3. GPS Your Best Life has many references to the importance of mindset and managing your thoughts. How has your mindset impacted (positive or otherwise) your results? How can you remind yourself to shift your mindset?
4. Finding your true calling is an important element of this book. Many people struggle to find their true calling. Do you think most people are living their true calling? How would we know? How do you nurture your true calling and passions? How is life different when you are “on purpose” or living in accordance with your true calling?
5. The authors walk the reader through different ways to visualize their future, and their dreams. What challenges do people face with visualizing their future? How will their Daily 5 GPS activities help readers accomplish their goals and move toward their best life?
6. Excuses and habits are often at the root of procrastination and not taking action. What examples of this do you have in your life? Part of changing behavior involves creating a new mindset and behaviors that support the mindset and goal. When have you had to do this in your life? What worked well, and what did you learn then that you still do?
7. In GPS Your Best Life, the authors acknowledge that readers are likely wearing many hats (and have different or perhaps competing demands in their life). What are the hats you wear? How do you keep your head above water and juggle them all?
8. There is a theme of gratitude woven throughout the book. What was your perception on the role gratitude plays in shaping the life you want to live? How do you express gratitude to others? How does coming from a place of gratitude impact communications, and relationships?
9. GPS Your Best Life chapter titles and many of the tips use analogies from a GPS, going on journey, and maps, as well as situational examples of different individuals . What was your experience with these concepts as you read the book?
10. The book ends with a chapter about knowing when the goals have been achieved, and celebrating the success. Have you ever achieved a goal and didn’t notice you had arrived? How have you celebrated your achievements, and what was the impact of these celebratory activities? What is your biggest, most memorable or most proud accomplishment on your journey thus far?