The Gate to Women's Country by Sherri S. Tepper

Discussion Questions

1. Which of the cultural innovations of the Women's Country do you think is working best for them?

Since they're trying to eliminate destruction and war, I think it was a good idea to keep women in charge of the professions (other than warriors) i.e. teachers, healers, judges.

2. Which cultural innovation is not working for them, or not working well?

Weeding out warriors genetically is a good idea, I guess, but it takes a long time! I also thought it was a terrible idea to turn the boys over to the warriors at such a young age (5) and then make them decide whether to be warriors or not at 15. Mothers can be a much better nurturing influence on their boys when they're young. At 15, most adolescents still want to "fit in" and don't want to be stigmatized. Maybe more boys would return through the women's gate if they were given to the men at an older age and if they decided what they wanted to be when they're older.

3. If you were required to practice a science, an art, and a craft, what would they be?

I think I'd be most interested in healing, music and pottery.

4. Do you think the sub-theme presented by the Homerian-style play "Iphigenia at Illium" was helpful? Did it add anything to your understanding of the story?

I understand why it was there but I didn't like it. It interrupted the "flow" for me.

5. What did or didn't you like about the book, and why?

The genetics twist was terrific. I got a good laugh out of that one. I didn't care for the fact that Stavia was so taken in by Chernon. I was really impressed with her intelligence and dismayed that she would let such a self-serving creep use her the way he did. :P I guess it just shows to go ya that "love is blind." Yuck.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help was the sixth book we read. Questions asked and my answers:

• Who was your favorite character and why?

My favorite character was Aibileen. I was able to make the strongest emotional "connection" with her. Aibileen was the kindest and most loving of all, sensitive to the needs of small children--especially poor Mae Mobley, who's mother was so awful to her. Maybe the author was closest to Aibileen too--she seemed to be more fleshed out than any of the other characters. I could just about see her there, telling me her story.

• Do you think Minny was justified in her distrust of white people?

Without a doubt! Other than Skeeter and Celia Foote, I haven't seen a single white character that treated her decently.

• Were you disappointed that Miss Skeeter didn't end the engagement before Stuart did?

I was disappointed that she went back to him so easily, yes. He was rude to her on that first date so I was surprised she'd even consider going out with him again--and then he dumped her again. I was totally not surprised that he walked out on her as soon as she told him about the book. :P

• Hilly seems to be a horrible, controlling woman, but a good mother. Is that possible?


It depends. I suppose a controlling woman could be a good mother, but not one that spews hate like Hilly did. It wasn't just her bigotry it was also her spiteful revenge she'd take out on someone who has the "nerve" to cross her. Children live what they learn. Hilly might love her kids but from her, they'd learn to be bigotted, small minded and vengeful. Nope, not a good mom.

• What did you think of the pie Minny made? Justified?

Hilly deserved every bite she took. It did gross me out though. (shudder) I sure do understand why Minny did it!

• Would you have had the courage to stand up and do what Miss Skeeter did? Or would you be the type to go along with the flow and the times.

I had a little trouble with this. I'm not sure to call what Skeeter did "courage". For a long time she didn't understand the risk she was putting the lives of the maids into. When she did do something "rebellious" I wasn't sure if it was really such or not. Example: Hilly demands that Skeeter print that horrible directive of hers. I think it would have been more courageous to flat out refuse and resign or write a disagreeing editorial about it than to pull a prank and then act all innocent about it.

I'm conflicted about it because Skeeter and I would be from two different generations. Skeeter was born around WWII and there was a whole different set of "rules" then. I can remember opening up my big mouth to object rather than to just go along with the flow. Sometimes I was ostracized and it did hurt but oh well. It was better to have that than not to say anything about something that was wrong.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

This was the fourth book we read in the R&R book club. The person who picked the book posted a lot of discussion questions and that's how we handled it that month. The questions I picked and my answers:

1. Do you sympathize with Olive Kitteridge as a character?

I found Olive to be a difficult character to like and it's hard to sympathize with someone you don't like. I found her to be overbearing and mean in the first story and it was only gradually that I was able to feel any sympathy at all for her. In the very last story I liked her a teeny bit. I was very surprised by the sensitivity and compassion she showed in some of the stories. I wasn't sure I believed it but apparently it was part of her nature. Appearances *can* be deceiving!

5. Why does Henry tolerate Olive as much as he does, catering to her, agreeing with her, staying even-keeled when she rants and raves? Is there anyone that you tolerate despite their sometimes overbearing behavior? If so, why?

He gave in way too much to her, in my opinion. That's the way some people are, though. They always put the needs of the ones they love first. No one's going to agree all the time in any relationship and usually one or the other will give in or compromise somehow. I don't think it's particularly healthy for one person to be giving all the time and the other to be taking/controlling all the time and that's the way Henry-Olive's marriage seemed to work. Neither one was totally happy with the arrangment. :P As for me, sometimes I tolerate my DH's overbearing behavior because I love him and because he *is* trying to be more flexible. He's become less rigid in the 7 years we've been married.

7. Does it seem fitting to you that Olive would not respond while others ridiculed her body and her choice of clothing at Christopher and Suzanne’s wedding?

Olive's response does seem fitting to me because it's what I would have done. I have overheard other people making fun of me because of my appearance. I've been terribly hurt but too proud to be confrontational about it. I don't want to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they hurt me.

14. Was Christopher justified in his fight with Olive in “Security”? Did he kick her out, or did she voluntarily leave? Do you think he and Ann are cruel to Olive?

I don't know for sure if Christopher was justified in what he said to Olive because I haven't seen them together often. The few times I have, however, I did get the feeling that Olive was a controlling presence in his life. Until he said so, I didn't know that her mood swings affected him. I think that he has very real mixed feelings about his mother and his feelings definitely needed to be expressed. I wouldn't say he kicked her out. She said she wanted to go. She may not have realized it but I believe she said she wanted to leave to make him feel guilty. This time, he didn't play into her hands. I absolutely do not think he and Ann were cruel to Olive.

A short answer to #15, which is a follow-up: I do believe Olive is completely oblivious to the impression she makes on others. I believe she was truly shocked by what her son said to her. She probably doesn't realize how much her former students feared her and would be surprised by that too. She would be equally shocked to know that she did make Henry miserable many times.

22. Apart from the hostage-taking, Olive Kitteridge refers to many violent or traumatic events in the lives of its characters or their friends or relatives – suicide, divorce, infidelity, miscarriages, death by drowning, a major stroke, a fatal hunting accident. Books can seem oppressive when painful events pile up, or so dark you can’t finish them. If you read all of Olive Kitteridge, how did Strout keep you reading? Why didn’t the book seem oppressive? Did it?

I'll be perfectly honest here: I kept reading because I felt committed to it. I really enjoy the R&R Book Club. If I'd picked up the book to read on the own, I wouldn't have finished it. I really did find it to be very dark and depressing.

Books I read for the R&R book club

No, R&R doesn't stand for rest & relaxation! It stands for Rants & Raves and is on the Obesity Help website. In March, there was a thread about starting a book club. I was interested and I joined. These aren't real reviews, I guess, but they do give the gist of what I thought about some of these books. We started reading the books in March or April and have been going since.

1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls--She recounts some hair-raising experiences growing up with her sisters and brother. Her parents were totally dysfunctional even if they did love their kids...and it was hard to tell at times. I was amazed that the three older kids did so well, managing to support themselves and make good lives for themselves. I have a lot of admiration for what Jeannette Walls and her brother and sister were able to accomplish.

Personally, I grew up with a possibly bipolar, probably alcoholic and definitely raging mother and an indifferent hard drinking father. This book was good but hit a little close to home for me too!

2. Prayers for Bobby by Mary Griffith


I felt sad reading much of the book. What a waste of a young life! Bobby seemed like many teenagers, just trying to find his way in life. I think whether gay or not, lots of kids feel alienated like Bobby did and many are left to flounder on their own. But to have your own mother telling you you need to be saved or go to hell is just too much! I would have preferred to stick more to Bobby's story than to hear Mary's story, especially the last section of the book. I thought her change could have been condensed a little more. I did appreciate the afterword although I realized at that point it was written in 1996?

Just as personal experience, I was the member of a more liberal minded Presbyterian church in the 1990s and I remember the whole movement to try and have gays become ordained and open members of the session and deacons and all that. The committee I was on wrote up a report and I remember how full of hope we felt. Two of my friends wanted to be deacons but were afraid because they couldn't come out openly. One friend was a deacon but couldn't come out and it was one of those don't-ask-don't-tell BS type policies we had.

So when the whole thing was rejected out of hand we were crushed. I fell away from the church. I can't say for sure that was the reason specifically. I just felt the whole thing (organized church & its rules) was hypocritical and I just didn't want to go anymore. I thought, I don't have to be in a church to worship God and to have Jesus in my heart.

My biggest regret about that, though, is that my kids were young when I pulled out and they know very little about the stories and their own salvation. Recently I asked if they believe in God and that Jesus has saved them and I got, "well, it's a comforting idea" and "I sure hope so." I guess while I was home worshipping I didn't do a very good job passing the teaching onto my kids. All I taught them was bigotry in any form is WRONG and the do unto others rule. But that is how I try to live my life--love your neighbor as you love yourself and love God with all your heart. There are NO clauses in there that says love your neighbor except if he/she is gay/black/poor/fill-in-the-blank.

3. Napalm and Silly Putty by George Carlin

One night I needed my son Bill to drive me somewhere and he put in a George Carlin tape for us to listen to. It's funnier listening to him than reading him although I found many parts of the book hilarious. I *did* notice the repetition though. Parts of this book were on the tape which was from a different book entirely. Bill told me, yeah, he does tend to use some of his routines over and over.

A few things I enjoyed--

"Do you ever look at your watch and immediately forget the time, so you look again? And still it doesn't register so you have to look a third time. And then someone asks you what time it is, and you actually have to look at your watch for the fourth time in three minutes? Don't you feel stupid?" Heh heh, yes!

I liked the section about new speak. Carlin called them euphemisms that soften our language. Like, saying dental appliances instead of false teeth, landfill instead of dump, civil disorder instead of riot, job action instead of strike and gaming resort for gambling joint.

Some of the material I didn't find funny at all, especially the references to rape and other violence.

Booking Through Thursday

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

It's easier for me to explain why I put a book back down immediately. I don't like to read formula books (i.e. detective) or romance stories. As soon as I see the word detective or investigator, the book goes down. The same thing happens if it hints of romance--like, young woman with 3 kids loses husband, moves to a new town, meets obnoxious contractor working on her new house. Bam! Down it goes. Sometimes I'll put the book down as soon as I get a good look at the author's name because of the genre they write in.

Books I'll open up and browse through:

They're "different" in that the hero/heroine is unique or has an unusual problem to handle. One example of a book I browsed further and then read is Stones From the River. Excellent book!

Maybe it's about a time travelling heroine--i.e., Outlander. I'll overlook the romance because there's enough other interesting and thrilling parts of the story.

I usually enjoy historical fiction so sometimes I'm hooked by the time period. Paradise Alley centered on a group of characters experiencing the anti-draft rioting in NYC back in 1863 (or was it 1862, duh!).

Books I read while I was unable to move around in July

From This That & The Other Thing:

I did a *lot* of reading the last 10-12 days which really helped me pass the long hours. Two of them I'm holding back while I decide which book to choose for a club I belong to on another forum. The others:

Dovey Coe by Frances O'Roark Donnell: I ordered the book because I saw it was about a family with a deaf member and I was interested in it. It's actually a book for teens or young adults but I still enjoyed it. Dovey Coe is a child growing up in the mountains around the time of the Great Depression. She is a plucky character and speaks in her mountain accented voice. There's a nasty bully that rags on her deaf brother and is pursuing her pretty older sister. He lures Dovey to the store his family owns. Dovey becomes involved in an altercation with him, trying to stop him from killing her brother's dog. She's knocked out but when she comes to, the bully is dead. She's accused of murder...but did she do it?

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin: This was a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. Doris Kearns Goodwin grew up on Long Island and so a lot of the places she mentions were totally familiar. She also describes small town/block living where people knew and looked out for each other and I remember that too. She & her family were avid fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers before they defected to LA. It's a great book for anyone who grew up in the '50s and '60s!

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert: The story is about Rachel Kalama and takes place in Hawaii between 1890s to mid 1900s. Rachel is about 7 when she develops leprosy and is forcibly quarantined on Molokai. Although you'd think this would be a very sad book, it's very upbeat in many places. Rachel has a great deal of courage as do many of the other people suffering from leprosy. I enjoyed it and was moved by it.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven: This is the story of a dedicated young vicar sent to live in a very isolated village of native Americans in British Columbia. The people grow to love and trust him as he learns their language and culture. Ah...but the bishop has a very special reason for sending the young vicar--a sad one. It's a quick and easy read.

I'm holding back on: In This Sign by Joanne Greenberg and Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

Eye Opening Books II

When the civil rights movement began in the south I was still kind of little. I didn't know what was going on at first. Later, when I began watching the news for seventh grade current events, I saw the rioting in places like Watts and didn't understand. My parents explained the riots were instigated by "troublemakers".

I lived on Long Island with my parents and brother until December 1964. Our schools weren't segregated so I had no idea that they had been in the south. Later, I remember reading about the violence of busing issues in the north to fully integrate schools. The only thing I thought was how silly it was to have to ride a bus across town when there was a neighborhood school a kid could walk to. By then, I was living in Baltimore and I don't remember we really needed busing. The schools were pretty much integrated and so we went in our neighborhoods.

When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was shocked, saddened and confused. He was only 39 years old, a preacher. Who would kill a preacher? I was confused, though, because my parents said he was a "troublemaker". How could he be? He was a preacher! Yet, there was rioting in Baltimore and smoke filled the sky. Maybe my parents were right, I thought...but why? Why were people so angry?

Well...I was dumb. I didn't know very much about what was going on in the country or in the world either until then--1968, when all hell seemed to break loose.

I read Gone With the Wind and saw the movie with my parents when it was re-released. Oho, the people in the south had owned slaves. That was very bad, I thought, but that was 100 years ago. Why was everyone still mad now?

I was thinking and seeing things like the naive child I was.

I started to get it when I read To Kill A Mockingbird. A black man was on trial for his life after being accused of raping a white woman. The first thing that troubled me was that some of the white people expected appointed lawyer Atticus Finch to put up a dummy defense. They all anticipated that Tom Robinson would be hanged anyway.

The "star" witness, Mayella Ewing, was a pathetically poor and lonely young woman who only had her child siblings for company. Their father was on the dole, an alcoholic, and the kids showed up for one day of school and that was it. They were worse off and off crummier character than anyone else, black or white, and yet she was going to be believed just because of her color. During question, it became very clear she was lying. She hadn't been raped. She'd been attracted to Tom and her father saw her hugging the terrified handyman. Tom ran out of the house and the bum father beat the hell out of his daughter.

Atticus proved there was no way Tom could have committed the crimes Mayella accused him of...yet Tom was convicted. He was "shot" while trying to "escape". I felt as sick as the kids in the story felt.

No wonder black people were mad! They were "kept in their place" by Klan mentality, shot, beaten or hanged because of what? The color of their skin. That was sickening.

I felt angry because no one had told me any of this happened. This was supposed to be a free country, why wasn't it? I began to argue with my parents about the things they said. Why did they think protesters were troublemakers? Why did they hate Puerto Ricans? Why did the government lie to us?

I still didn't know much about the civil rights movement in the '50s and '60s. It just didn't come up in school and my parents surely weren't going to talk about "troublemakers". Once I began to see footage of the police with clubs, hoses and dogs set on marching blacks I was really horrified. Those policemen and the hate filled white crowds looked more like Nazis than Americans.

I was already out of high school so it was after 1973 that I saw that old footage. I thought, what! That kind of segregation was still going on when I was a child? What! Blacks in states like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana couldn't all vote? What! Even in 1968, Rev. King was still working on civil rights? It hadn't happened for everyone even then? What!

I just finished reading Coming of Age in Mississippi and again my stomach turned at the hateful behavior of white Christians. They'd kill a black man for even looking at a white woman. Anne Moody writes about the murders of several young men from her town and she had to get out because she couldn't stomach all the hatred.

She wrote about her work in "the Movement", exposing herself to being beaten, arrested or killed just to be able to sit in a restaurant and be served or sit down and wait for a bus like everyone else. Segregated restaurants, bathrooms and waiting rooms? She lived in constant fear because she had the nerve to go around trying to get other blacks to register to vote. That whole system was crazy. Blacks already had the right to vote...why did they need to pass some kind of crazy test the whites thought up?

Worst of all...where was everyone? It wasn't just the white southerners and the KKK causing the trouble. And they were the troublemakers, not the protesting blacks. What's wrong for asking for what you're due? It was the whites who responded with murder. Now that is wrong wrong wrong. Anyway, where were the rest of us? Where was the government? They were quaking in their shoes, I guess. They didn't care enough or were too scared to get involved.

I don't want to come off sounding sanctimonious or righteous. It just makes me sick. Apparently we're all capable of being Nazis and Klansmen. When we look the other way, that's just as bad. That's what happened in Germany to the Jews, here to the blacks, and all around the world.