Until I Say Goodbye (Spencer-Wendel)

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 thest talking points to help get a discussion started for Until I Say Good-bye:

1. What do you find most admirable about Susan when she learns of her illness? What enables her to approach her illness and coming death with such courage? Where does that kind of strength come from?

2. How might you respond to receiving such a diagnsis? What would be hardest for you? Would you forgo treatments to extend your life as she did? Would you ever choose assisted suicide...or reject it as Susan did?

3. If you had a year to live, how would you choose to live it? What would you do...where would you go?

4. Do you feel inspired by this book...and by Susan Spencer-Wendel?

5. Although Susan, her husband, and many reviewers insist that this book is not sad, there are certainly sad moments. What were some of the saddest occasions in the book for you. The memoir also contains humor—talk about the parts you found funny. Overall, how do you characterize this book—funny, sad, uplifting, depressing?

6. In an Amazon.com interview with Cokie Roberts, Susan says:

Desire is the root of all suffering, I believe. To want something you can't have. The cure is to not want it. I practice not wanting a cure, preparing to die. Choosing the path of least resistance. Going gracefully into the night.

Talk about that statement. Is desire "the root to all suffering"? A number of religious practices adhere to thata philosophy. Do you? What does that mean not to desire? Wouldn't life be flat and uninteresting without desire? Or would not-desiring lead to a better life?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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