The Rosie Project Book Club Questions and Recipe

*If you are new here, WELCOME! For The Rosie Project, I provide your book club with a brief summary, a recipe, and discussion questions in that order!

If your book club needs a good laugh or a feel good book, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is the book for you. From page one, I loved the narrator’s voice and couldn’t stop smiling. As someone who works in a business office during the day, I have met so many Don’s that I can’t count them. Too bad they weren’t as funny or redeemable.

This book really was a breath of fresh air to me. I’ll be interested to know if you felt the same. Even though it is a rom-com essentially, I had no trouble finding more than enough book club questions and a recipe (ummm, margaritas anyone?) to compliment the book.

If you loved The Rosie Project, you’ll be glad to know that there are two other books in the series–The Rosie Effect and, just recently released, The Rosie Result. Both promise hilarity. Sometimes reading a good-feel book is just what the doctor ordered.

The Rosie Project is also being made into a movie soon and I can’t wait to see it! If your book club picks The Rosie Project for your next read, I’ve provided book club questions and a delicious recipe for your meeting below! For food ideas and more, keep reading!

Here’s a brief summary for The Rosie Project:

When Don Tillman, genetics professor, decides that he’s ready to find a wife, he creates a lengthy questionnaire to find her—The Wife Project. To someone as socially challenged as Don, it seems like the obvious solution. When Rosie Jarman shows up at his office, he quickly eliminates her as a potential mate—smoker, barmaid, habitually late. Rosie needs Don for other reasons, though. She wants to find her biological father. Don agrees to help her—The Father Project. He initiates a journey that will challenge his rigid personality at every turn and open his mind to the possibility of love outside The Wife Project’s parameters.

For The Rosie Project recipe:

Looking for food suggestions for your book club for The Rosie Project? Despite Don’s, um…interesting diet, I couldn’t resist making his signature Sage and Pineapple Margarita!

If you’re looking for a pineapple margarita recipe, you’ll love this little twist that takes it to the next level.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is the adventure that Don and Rosie take when they sign up to serve drinks at the medical school reunion.

The way Don shines in this scene really speaks to how he can use his characteristics for good and also to how he loves Rosie without even realizing it. I loved how the medical school graduates cheered for him without realizing that Don is a highly intelligent professor. I thought it was humorous, ironic, and perfect cause for making a margarita!

If you’re looking for more food ideas for The Rosie Project, consider making the lobster salad Don makes Rosie.

And, in case this doesn’t whet your whistle, check out Don Tillman’s Standardized Meal System, rife with recipes Don would approve. I’m not joking, it’s a real book.

Pineapple Margarita Recipe:

The Rosie Project Book Club Questions:

*WARNING: May contain spoilers!

1) What did you think about the fact that Don’s only friend outside of Gene and Claudia was an elderly woman named Daphne? Don buys Daphne daphne flowers for her birthday which elicits an emotional response from her. Then, when she develops Alzheimer’s and believes it’s her birthday often, he continues to buy her daphne flowers for each occasion. How did this make Don’s character immediately loveable when he comes off as being very cold otherwise?

2) Don Tillman as the narrator is really what makes the book such a fun read. Can you think of another book where the narrator had such an impact on the reader’s experience? Discuss how different the book would have been if told from Rosie’s perspective versus Don’s.

3) How does the fact that Don Tillman has a Ph.D. in genetics and studies Asperger’s, but doesn’t realize that he has Asperger’s, add irony to the story? How do you think that this speaks to the fact that you are often the last person to realize something about yourself?  

4) What were your initial thoughts about The Wife Project? As time went on did you feel sorry for Don that he tried to solve such a problem using only ration and logic? Have you ever known anyone who tried to confront major life decisions this way? How did it turn out?

5) This book is a really fun and enjoyable read. Which scene was your favorite? Was there any part that made you laugh out loud?

6) Several times in the book it is mentioned that Don’s personality might be a rouse or front. What did you think? Was Don really being himself or was his odd personality a coping mechanism or self-protection?

7) What did you think of Gene and Claudia’s relationship? Did you think that they were helpers or harmers to Don? Why?

8) Were you surprised at how The Father Project turned out? How do you think this speaks to how we view ourselves in relation to our parents and the complexity of that relationship?

9) Don decides rather spontaneously to take Rosie to New York for the last tests. Did you think this was believable in light of his rigid personality? Have you or someone you know ever done such a grand romantic gesture?

10) Don questions whether he is capable of love although we, as the reader, can see that he is through both his thoughts and actions. Rosie, too, questions Don’s capability to love despite his actions. In most romances the man is often more in tune with his feelings than is usually the case in real life. How did you find this dynamic of the hard-to-read man and the questioning woman more or less true to your own life experiences?

Have you read The Rosie Project? What was your favorite part? How did you relate to Don?

Until next time, Happy Reading!

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Other titles by Graeme Simsion you might enjoy!