Wager

Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did you find yourself reaching for a blanket or a hot drink while the ship was out in the cold?

Grann opens in an age of wooden ships and long voyages. What is the longest you have ever been away from home, and what did you miss most while you were gone?

So much of this book is about men far from any comfort. Which small moment of warmth, shelter, food, or plain human decency in these pages stayed with you the longest?

The crew sets out with enormous confidence in orders, rank, and routine. When has a familiar routine held you together during a hard stretch, and when has it stopped being enough?

Hunger and cold sit at the center of this story. Did reading it change how you feel about your own kitchen, your own bed, or the ordinary comforts you usually breeze past?

Grann keeps reminding us that each survivor wrote his own version of events. Is there a story in your family that gets told two different ways depending on who is telling it, and how do you feel about that?

Reading about people pushed past what they thought they could bear, did you find yourself feeling more tenderness toward them or more distance? Talk about where your sympathy went, and where it quietly ran out.

By the last pages, whose account did your heart believe, even if your head was not certain? What is it about that voice that earned your trust?