May 2013 – The End of the Affair

Please join us on Wednesday May 22nd when we discuss The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1560.

“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”  — Graham Greene

From Wiki -

“The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during the Second World War in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. Bendrix is loosely based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel. Sarah is based loosely on Greene’s mistress at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated.

Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband…”

From the book The Third Woman by William Cash, we learn,

“Airports were his means of escape from himself as well as from other people – with the exception of Catherine.  With her, they symbolised the point of meeting, not ‘The Point of Departure’ (the original title of The End of the Affair).”

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

The year is 2013.  There exists a community.  It is 186,080 strong and growing.  Where is it?  How do you get there?  What is its common bond?

Are you a Jane Austen disciple?  Elizabeth Bennet speaks to you?   Trying to understand Darcy?  You are not alone. You might want to visit the home of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries an online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  The YouTube channel has 186,080 subscribers (an ever growing number).  Videos have over 29,000,000 views.  This world was developed by Hank Green and Bernie Su.

Jane Austen lived in a world of letters, manuscripts, quills, and ink.  What would Jane use today?  Do you think she would be a blogger, or a Twitter addict (@TheLizzieBennet, @wmdarcy, ..#TheLBD…)?   What about YouTube?  Would Jane Austen be a vlogger?  Or would she have a gel pen and paper?

Spoiler Alert!  -   Janet (an avid fan of LBD) forwarded the following:

This is a fascinating article in Ms. Magazine (or, rather, the Ms. Blog) by an Austen scholar and associate professor of English literature at Fordham University about the popular Lizzie Bennett Diaries video series.  It focuses on the ways in which the LBD changes the role of Lydia. Wait until you’ve watched the series to read the article, however — too many spoilers!

April 2013 – Eighth Annual Great Books Student Symposium

For our April Book Club, we will attend the Great Books Symposium featuring Antigone by Sophocles.

From Professor Ward Page, co-ordinator, Great Books Program -

You are invited to attend the Eighth Annual Great Books Student Symposium on Wednesday, May 1st, room 1608, on the Des Plaines campus.  The Symposium will have two parts this year:

12:30–1:45 p.m.  Students from Oakton and Wright Colleges will read papers on Antigone and lead a discussion which includes audience participation

2:15–3:15   p.m.   Oakton faculty will present an abridged playreading of Antigone, followed by a discussion between cast members and audience

Students are using the following text:
Antigone by Sophocles
translated, with introduction and notes, by Paul Woodruff.
Hackett Pub. Co., c2001

Please join us -

March 2013 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Please join us on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 when we meet to discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 2138.  Room changed to IT Conference Room (0424 in the basement).

From Penguin:

Joyce wrote the first draft of a work he called Stephen Hero between 1901 and 1906, but was dissatisfied and later rewrote and developed it.  He partially destroyed this version in a fit of rage when it was turned down by a publisher, and again rewrote the work in the form in which it was finally published in 1916 as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

What do we have here?  A bildungsroman you say?  Say how?, you say –

\ˈbil-du̇ŋ(k)s-rō-ˌmän, -du̇ŋz-\ : a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character.

Class of novel derived from German literature that deals with the formative years of the main character, whose moral and psychological development is depicted. It typically ends on a positive note, with the hero’s foolish mistakes and painful disappointments behind him and a life of usefulness ahead. It grew out of folklore tales in which a dunce goes out into the world seeking adventure. One of the earliest novelistic developments of the theme, Johann W. von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96), remains a classic example.   –  from Merriam-Webster.

February 2013 – Pride and Prejudice

HAPPY 200TH ANNIVERSARY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE!

Please join us on Wednesday, February 27, 2013 when we meet to discuss Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 2138.

From The Novel 100 by Daniel S. Burt -

Few readers have been able to resist Jane Austen’s remarkable second published novel.  Pride and Prejudice brings together an utterly charming, headstrong heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and a hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is undervalued and misunderstood until the novel’s romantic climax, when reader and heroine alike change their estimation of his true worth.  The novel also claims one of the most memorable supporting casts in fiction, including the ultimate parental embarrassment, the marriage-hungry Mrs. Bennet, the oily, toadying Mr. Collins, and the fire-breathing social dragon Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whom Elizabeth slays in one of the funniest, most satisfying confrontations in literature, as well as an ingenious courtship plot that combines psychological, social, and moral drama.  Jane Austen herself referred to the novel as “my own darling child” and thought Elizabeth “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know.”  The novelist need not have worried, since most readers have shared the author’s pleasures in her heroine, shortlisting her as one of fiction’s strongest female presences, while valuing Pride and Prejudice as Austen’s masterpiece and as one of the wittiest romantic comedies of manners ever written.

The USA Today Why are we still so passionate about Pride and Prejudice? article is worth the read.

Are you up to the P&P challenge?  Take the quiz and share your score/thoughts in the comments.

For those who can’t get enough, here are some noteworthy websites:

–The Republic of Pemberley–for all things Austen  http://www.pemberley.com/
–The Jane Austen Centre–museum & giftshop in Bath, England  http://www.janeausten.co.uk/
–JASNA–Jane Austen Society of North America–the premier scholarly group  http://www.jasna.org/  and the Chicago chapter:  http://www.jasnachicago.org/
–Jane Austen Books–a small online store, run by a mother & daughter in Ohio:  http://www.janeaustenbooks.net/

January 2013 – Anna Karenina

We will meet on January 30, 2013 to discuss Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy in room 1550.  We will be using the following translation:

Anna Karenina : a novel in eight parts /
Leo Tolstoy ; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

From Wikipedia:

Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with editor Mikhail Katkov over political issues that arose in the final installment (Tolstoy’s unpopular views of volunteers going to Serbia); therefore, the novel’s first complete appearance was in book form.

Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel.

Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be “flawless as a work of art”. His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired “the flawless magic of Tolstoy’s style”, and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as “the best ever written”. The novel is currently enjoying popularity, as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in “The Top Ten” in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the “greatest novel ever written”.

Main characters

• Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (Анна Аркадьевна Каренина): Stepan Oblonsky’s sister, Karenin’s wife and Vronsky’s lover.
• Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky (Aлекceй Kиpиллoвич Bpoнcкий): Lover of Anna, a cavalry officer
• Prince Stepan “Stiva” Arkadyevich Oblonsky (Cтeпaн “Cтивa” Aркaдьевич Oблoнский): a civil servant and Anna’s brother, a man about town, 34.
• Princess Darya “Dolly” Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Дарья “Дoлли” Aлeксaндрoвна Oблoнскaя): Stepan’s wife, 33
• Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin: a senior statesman and Anna’s husband, twenty years her senior.
• Konstantin “Kostya” Dmitrievich Levin: Kitty’s suitor and then husband, old friend of Stiva, a landowner, 32.
• Nikolai Dmitrievich Levin: Konstantin’s elder brother, an impoverished alcoholic.
• Sergius Ivanovich Koznyshev: Konstantin’s half-brother, a celebrated writer, 40.
• Princess Ekaterina “Kitty” Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya: Dolly’s younger sister and later Levin’s wife, 18.
• Princess Elizaveta “Betsy”: Anna’s wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky’s cousin
• Countess Lidia Ivanovna: Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
• Countess Vronskaya: Vronsky’s mother
• Sergei “Seryozha” Alexeyich Karenin: Anna and Karenin’s son
• Anna “Annie”: Anna and Vronsky’s daughter
• Varenka: a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad

A film adaptation was released November 16^th, 2012.  You can view the official film trailer here.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is a read-alike of Anna Karenina

December 2012 – Holiday Sampler

Please join us on December 12th as we share our thoughts on the following topics:

• Discuss “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote.   Discuss this and other “memoir” or memory pieces that were particularly meaningful or you enjoyed, and how memoir differs from fiction, and how we react to it.
• Share a book that represents the year of your birth or significant year in your life.
• Literary Afterlife – Is there one literary character for whom you wish there were more adventures?
• Books we’ve read this year and would recommend to others.  Books on your wish list.

Time permitting -

• Has a novel changed you—broadened your perspective? Have you learned something new or been exposed to different ideas about people or a certain part of the world?
• “Why do some books grab you and others don’t?  There are many possible reasons you might choose to read a particular novel, but what’s the number one aspect of a story that reliably and regularly hooks you?  Why does it have so much appeal?” – James W. Hall author of HitLit.
• Review Library Thing                                                                             http://www.librarything.com/groups/bombsbooksoffmybooks

We will meet in room 2609 at 11:30 am.

If you can’t attend the meeting but would like to share your answers, please leave a comment.