The Boys in the Boat

The questions

1. Joe is told to earn his seat every single day. Where in your life does that rule apply, and where would it be poison?
2. The book argues a great crew rows as one organism. What team have you been on that actually felt like that, and what made it work?
3. Joe's father drives away and leaves him. What do you make of the choice the book asks you to understand him anyway?
4. The boys row their best race half dead with illness. Is that inspiring, or is it a story we should stop telling? Defend your answer.
5. Pocock builds boats by hand and speaks in proverbs. Which piece of his advice would survive contact with your actual week?
6. The Berlin Games are a propaganda stage. How does the book handle rowing a beautiful race inside an ugly moment?
7. Whose approval is Joe actually rowing for by the final race? Whose are you working for?
8. The crew is made of loggers' and fishermen's sons. What did their kind of tough give them that talent could not?
9. If your kids read one chapter of this book someday, which one would you pick and why?

Running the night

• Pick the night before anyone leaves the last meeting. A fixed weeknight beats a good date.
• Text the sheet's first question two days ahead. It is the only prep anyone will do.
• Something to eat that does not need a plate on a lap.
• One person keeps time. Ninety minutes, then the book talk stops.
• Start with the round: one sentence each on where they got to. No apologies allowed.
• End by naming the next book and the next date out loud.

For this bookSomebody will want to pull up the 1936 final on a phone. Let them, at the end, not the start.

BringThe book, something to write with, and the one passage you underlined.