Book Club: The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

I feel a little like an Undomestic Goddess today. I got up with every intention of cranking out this book club post and then got distracted! I guess I have a few too many irons in the fire today. But, it will all get done.

First and foremost, I have to say that...

Things have been helter skelter today!  This is the second time I've sat down to work on this post and about the 10th time I have thought about sitting down to write it. Even now, It's almost time to pick up the girls from the bus stop and when I logged on here I did about five other things first!

We've all had days like that, I'm sure, but would you consider yourself a work-a-holic? 

 I think we would have to be pretty self aware to actually admit it if we were, because when we are in it, working many, many, many hours a week, laser focused, and everyone around us is doing the same, it is hard to step back and say YES, I do work too much!

 Instead we think, Sure, I work a lot but so does everyone else. Have you heard the saying "I'll rest when I'm dead?" It becomes a mantra for the work-aholic. And that becomes normal. We can't see another way, nor do we believe there is another way. We function on less and less sleep, striving to get everything checked off our list. There is always something else to do, some new deadline to meet, some new goal to push ourselves towards.

What if we just stopped? What if you were forced to stop?  In the book The Undomestic Goddess by Sophia Kinsella we see what happens to Samantha Sweeting, an attorney billing in five minute increments, when her world is turned upside down by the smallest oversight.

 

What happens to Samantha had many of our book club readers page turning! Almost everyone who braved the rains  and winds with Hurricane Sandy on our heals agreed that the story fit well with our lighter, gentler selections of the past few months. The story rolled along at a nice pace with characters that were quirky, and likeable (for the most part!), and finished in a satisfying ending.  I'm not sure all of us bought the premise that a high powered attorney would find herself quite suddenly in charge of running a household--cooking, cleaning and laundry etc.-- but we could suspend our disbelief to enjoy the laughs and spend time with the characters that Sophie Kinsella brings to life in this novel.

Many of us were so happy to be out of the house for a few minutes of "me time"-- knowing that school had already been delayed or cancelled due to the storm-- that our discussion was lively, but not completely focused. We talked about a couple of questions that the book poses, but once everyone got to sharing, there wasn't time for much more. So I will pose some of our discussion questions here and I hope you  consider them and choose one or two to answer in our comments! Especially if you've been reading along with us at home. 

We focused on discussion questions provided by Book Movement* -- which provides book guides for 20,000 books! *Book Movement did not pay us to mention them. We just wanted to credit our source!

In the beginning of the book Samantha is presented with a questionaire asking her: 

Would you consider yourself stressed?

On average, how many hours do you spend in an office every day?

Do you exercise regularly?

Do you drink 8 glasses of water a day?

How would YOU answer those questions?

Have you ever been accused of being addicted to stress? What's the difference between being a work-aholic and living a busy life?

How did the office politics at Carter Spink compare to your experience in the world of work? Who is the Ketterman in your life, dropping huge, last-minute projects on your desk? 

Samantha wistfully adores "The Waltons." Why is her family so different from the one depicted in that show? What does the ideal family look like in the twenty-first century?

Discuss the debate between Samantha and Mrs. Farley at the end of Chapter Three. Is sewing on a button a valuable skill, or at least as valuable as Mrs. Farley says it is? What are the most valuable skills for women to master?

What do Nathaniel's and Samantha's histories have in common? What makes them an unlikely couple, yet a perfect couple? How do they gradually learn to trust each other? 

Are Trish and Eddie good bosses? Would you want to work for them? 

At times, Samantha suffers from a sort of withdrawal after leaving Carter Spink. What is the equivalent of Carter Spink in your life–the community or organization without which you would feel empty? Have you ever had to face the prospect of losing that connection? What alternative plan would you come up with, as Samantha stumbled into the Geiger plan? 

Much to her horror, Samantha is hounded by the media for sound bites and pursued by advertisers to become an icon for products. Do the headlines in Chapter Twenty-four raise any real-life issues? Do women and men face identical challenges in the modern corporate world? 

What do you predict for Samantha and Nathaniel's future?

Rather than responding to each question myself here, let's go ahead and hold our discussion in our comments section! Choose a question, give your general thoughts about the selection, or tell us how wonderful we are for hosting this book club on our blog each month--we'll take it all! *wink*

Now for the good old housekeeping side of things--everything you want to know about the More than Mommies Book Club can be found under our book club tab. 

For November we will be delving into: 

 The Blood of Flowers: A Novel by Anita Amirrezvani  

You can purchase your copy directly from the link we provided or visit the More Than Mommies shop to see all of our monthly selections and purchase an alternate version of November's title. 

Have a suggestion on a book that you think our book club members might enjoy? Leave your suggestion in the comments or contact us--we are easy to find!

Thanks for joining us this month! Happy reading! 

{This post contains affiliate links}