The Thirteen Clocks

I just finished a children's book called The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber. It was quite different. It was a fairy tale of sorts. It was a tad bit scary for children under 12 though. The characters were the best part of the book. I would recommend reading it if you have about 1 hr. It is a "chapter book" but is quite small with illustrations. From a scale of 1-5, I would give it a 2.

1. When Alice becomes disoriented in Harvard Square, a place she's visited daily for twenty-five years, why doesn't she tell John? Is she too afraid to face a possible illness, worried about his possible reaction, or some other reason?
Yes...all of the above.

2. After first learning she has Alzheimer's disease, "the sound of her name penetrated her every cell and seemed to scatter her molecules beyond the boundaries of her own skin. She watched herself from the far corner of the room" (pg. 70). What do you think of Alice's reaction to the diagnosis? Why does she disassociate herself to the extent that she feels she's having an out-of-body experience?
Alice feels like a part of her has died. She probably feels like one of those people you see in the movies in a hospital scene floating above her body and looking down at herself. I think Alice hearing the diagnosis was one of the hardest parts of the book. She knew in her heart that something was wrong, but to actually hear someone tell you a diagnosis is a whole other thing.
3. Do you find irony in the fact that Alice, a Harvard professor and researcher, suffers from a disease that causes her brain to atrophy? Why do you think the author, Lisa Genova, chose this profession? How does her past academic success affect Alice's ability, and her family's, to cope with Alzheimer's?
I believe that Alice was fortunate to have her brain as healthy and intelligent as she did before Alzheimers set in. I wish I could be a professor at Harvard!! Not too many people can say that they teach Harvard students. I do believe that because of her academic success, this disease is much harder for Alice and her family to cope with.
4. "He refused to watch her take her medication. He could be mid-sentence, mid-conversation, but if she got out her plastic, days-of-the-week pill container, he left the room" (pg. 89). Is John's reaction understandable? What might be the significance of him frequently fiddling with his wedding ring when Alice's health is discussed?
I think John felt as though his marriage was already over. He felt like he already lost Alice as soon as her brain started deteriorating. I truly think that he couldn't bear to help Alice or talk about her health.

5. When Alice's three children, Anna, Tom and Lydia, find out they can be tested for the genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer's, only Lydia decides she doesn't want to know. Why does she decline? Would you want to know if you had the gene?
Lydia probably feels like she would disappoint her mother if she knew that she inherited it as well. Lydia also was more of the wandering soul that would rather live life than live knowing that you were going to end up with Alzheimers.
6. Why is her mother's butterfly necklace so important to Alice? Is it only because she misses her mother? Does Alice feel a connection to butterflies beyond the necklace?
The butterfly necklace symbolizes a change. Alice does change once diagnosed with Alzheimers, however, the butterfly can also symbolize freedom which Alice also gets when diagnosed with Alzheimers in the aspect that she is freed from her obligations at Harvard. She is freed from the expectations that everyone forced on her during her life. She was all of a sudden free to enjoy life and do as she wants to.
7. Do you enjoy this book? Rate it on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best. Why?
I would rate this book a 3. It was an easy read but had a disturbing topic to me. My own grandfather had dementia and it was incredibly hard to read some of the deteriorating moments for Alice. I imagined how my grandfather felt when he didn't recognize us or remember something correctly. I would recommend it to anyone entering the health field that will be dealing with people with Alzheimers.

Book List for Summer...

Please reply to this post if you would like to see a favorite book be discussed in this online book club. I originally had a list of books I wanted to review for the summer, but have unfortunately deleted that post without meaning to. I have a few that I've recently read and wanted to review. I will list them below. As for suggestions- I'm ALWAYS open!!

The Tenth Circle- Jodi Picoult
Nineteen Minutes- Jodi Picoult
These Is My Words- Nancy E. Turner
The First Hour I Believed:A Novel- Wally Lamb
The Last Summer (of you and me)- Ann Brashares
The Help- Kathryn Stockett
What the Dead Know- Laura Lippman
The Lace Reader- Barry Brunonia
Plain Truth- Jodi Picoult
The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver
Outlander- Diana Gabaldon
The Sleeping Beauty Proposal- Sarah Strohmeyer
Sarah: Women of Genesis- Orson Scott Card

That should keep me busy for awhile. I do appreciate good book suggestions.

Next Book to Review...

Still Alice
By:Lisa Genova




Synopsis: Fifty year old Alice Howland, a world-renowned expert in linguistics and a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Still Alice is the story of the unraveling of Alice's life as her disease progresses.

"Good in Bed" Book Review

1. With Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner has garnered a lot of early praise for her alternately hilarious and poignant dialogue, and also for her pitch-perfect ear in rendering the conversational rhythms of Cannie's first-person narrative voice. Looking back through the novel, what is it about the dialogue that works so well? In what ways does it serve to subtly develop each character's motivations and idiosyncrasies?
The dialogue of this particular novel is what makes it an easy read. You feel as though you are Cannie's best friend, seeing into her life more so than her actual best friend in the novel, Sammantha. You feel like Bruce broke up with YOU...he called YOU fat. You literally step into Cannie's life and it is refreshing to escape from your own life to do so. Yes, Cannie has problems...(big problems- and no, that's not a pun). As I tried to figure out how Cannie felt, I realized I was actually figuring out how I felt. Overall, it really worked for Weiner to tell this story from Cannie's perspective.

2. Discuss, in connection with the previous question, the specific tone and quality of Cannie Shapiro's voice. What techniques does Weiner employ to make Cannie's musings and descriptions come across so intimately? What sets the author's style apart from that of other contemporary authors? To which novelists would you say Weiner bears the closest comparison?
To put it simply, Weiner doesn't hold anything back. Cannie messes up just like we would. She speaks freely which is so refreshing. The vocabulary didn't require the reader to pick up a dictionary. She was a down-to-earth character with real-life issues/problems. Of the recent books I have read, Jennifer Weiner most closely resembles the work of Adena Halpern who wrote, "The Ten Best Days of My Life." Although I like Jennifer Weiner's work much better.

3. Cannie Shapiro is, among other things, a woman struggling to emerge from the shadow cast by her father's emotional abuse and aggressive abandonment. How successful is she, finally, in doing so?
Throughout the novel, I felt as though Cannie never really played the "victim". She did not have "victim mentality" which was delightful to see. She goes through some pain. She holds onto the past. In the end, she forgives and moves on from her past. It is truly refreshing.

4. In what ways do we see the painful legacy of Cannie's early relationship with her father (whom she dubs "the Original Abandoner") at work in the action of this novel, affecting the tenor of Cannie's relationships, choices, and/or motivations? To what degree can we view Bruce as a stand-in for her father?
When learning of her "abandonment" from her father, I felt as though Cannie was a typical person. She was not Cinderella nor a "wicked stepsister". She was a normal person with normal problems and normal outcomes. Some days were harder than others. I do not feel that Cannie will EVER abandon her daughter although when her daughter was in the hospital for such a long period of time, I felt like she abandoned her a bit. She also abandoned hope for her daughter. In the end, she learned how to live life without holding the past responsible for the future though. It ended well. As far as Bruce goes, I feel like Cannie actually abandoned Bruce before he abandoned her. It was a good lesson to learn. You cannot always get what you want when you want it. Cannie had to learn this the hard way. Bruce did not come back to her, even though she needed him badly. He abandoned the baby but he did not abandon Cannie.

5. "Maybe," Bruce writes in his notorious Moxie debut, "it was the way I'd absorbed society's expectations, its dictates of what men are supposed to want and how women are supposed to appear. More likely, it was the way she had. C. was a dedicated foot soldier in the body wars....C. couldn't make herself invisible. But I know that if it were possible -- if all the slouching and slumping and shapeless black jumpers could have erased her from the physical world, she would have gone in an instant." With these lines, from the novel's opening chapter, Weiner begins to lay the framework for the larger themes that temper, texture, and lend weight to the comedy and romance propelling Cannie's story. What are these themes and issues, and how are they developed throughout the rest of the novel?
Accepting larger women, accepting yourself as a larger woman, depression and trying to disappear, and confidence and the lack thereof are the themes that I felt portrayed throughout the novel. In the beginning, we learn that Bruce noticed Cannie's lack of confidence in herself. She was a bright, successful person who didn't see anything in herself except a fat girl who could never be loved. She ends up going through quite a depression towards the end of the novel, which needed to happen in order for her to become the person that she could ultimately love herself and allow Dr. K to love in return.

6. The real-life specter of the Lewinsky-Clinton debacle looms in the background of this novel's fictional landscape. How does the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- and, more to the point, the witheringly cruel and petty reception that accompanied Lewinsky's emergence in media stories -- speak to the novel's portraits of male-female relationships in a body-obsessed culture?
I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thought, "What would a fat person NOT do in today's society to feel loved," when I heard of what Monica Lewinsky did with Bill Clinton. In today's society, larger women are looked down upon. I don't think it has anything to do with their confidence, their intellect, or whether or not they are well-off financially. Society cannot look past the fact that they are large. They automatically assume that they are lazy and just "do not care" about their bodies. That couldn't be farther from the truth. (At least in my perspective!)


7. How accurate is it to say that body fat has become, as Bruce writes in his column, "the only safe target in our politically correct world," the last "acceptable" object of societal prejudice? Where do we see this sort of prejudice at work? And in our advertising-drenched, consumer-driven society, where beauty and youth seem to be the chief signifiers of power and happiness, what are the implications and consequences of this prejudice?
It is EXTREMELY accurate to say that the last "acceptable" object of societal prejudice is based on how someone looks as far as body fat is concerned. Alot of companies offer "gym money" as a perk. They don't want someone "fat" representing their company. Fat=lazy and who would want to depend on a "lazy" person for anything in business? As far as the later part of this question- have you ever seen a "fat" person on the cover of any magazine unless it is making fun of them or commenting on how much weight someone had gained? I sure haven't.

8. How do Cannie's understandings of and feelings about her mother's relationship with Tanya evolve over the course of this story?
This was a hard part for me to tolerate in the story. I have nothing against people who are gay, but when you are affecting a family including children, or dissolving a marriage to be with your "partner," that is when I have a problem with it. Cannie comes around in the end as far as tolerating Tanya and the relationship she has with her mother, but I still don't feel as though Cannie absolutely comes to terms with it and is just fine with everything. She will always have feelings of confusion when it comes to her mother. It is just life. I would react the same way- so I completely understand Cannie's position on the matter.

9. Are Tanya's cloying penchants for therapy-speak, rainbow flags, and "tofurkey" enough to justify the hostile attitude and relentlessly barbed humor Cannie directs toward her? Why or why not? In what way might the absence of Cannie's father be contributing to her animosity? What else?
Yes, Cannie had every right to deal with Tanya the way she did. Of course we are not to judge others...that's God's place. However, Cannie dealt with hardships by using humor. I found it hillarious and not at all offensive. Cannie is obviously still upset about her father's absense in her and her siblings' lives. She blames Tanya for this because it is the easiest way to deal with the circumstances.

10. Recalling a lecture from Psych 101 on the behavioral effects of random reinforcement, Cannie realizes that she's "become [her] father's rat." What is going on here? Unpack the meanings of Cannie's metaphor, and discuss how it relates to her subsequent relationships with men.
Her father always told her she was a second-class citizen because she was fat. It got to the point where her father actually left her and her family to pursue another family in hopes that he could just "quit" the old one. Cannie's metaphor means that she was the experiment for her father. He tried with her and succeeded with his new family. She was the trial run. Because she had such a difficult time with her father, she shut out men before they could leave her. That's what happened with Bruce.

11. Rate this book on a scale of 1-5. Write any comments below.
I would rate this book a 3. It touched me as I deal with some of the above-mentioned issues that Cannie dealt with. I laughed with her, got depressed when she did, and totally understood her every move. I really related well with her. I am not much of a chic-lit type of girl. That is why only a 3. However, this book is probably one of my fave chic-lit books I have read. Hope you enjoyed!!

Next Book to Review...

It is a chic lit book with a trashy title...however not a trashy chic lit book (if that makes sense!!)

Welcoming... "Good In Bed" by Jennifer Weiner

Is Anyone Out There?

Please comment and leave your name so I know if anyone at all is reading this blog... Thanks!!