February 2015 – The Wreath

Please join us on Wednesday February 25, 2015 when we discuss Kristin Lavransdatter I. The Wreath by Sigrid Undset translation by Tiina Nunnally.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 1550.

From PenguinClassics.com –

When The Wreath first appeared in English, the New York Times hailed it as “strong and dramatic, founded upon those emotions and impulses which belong not to any especial time or country, but to all humanity.” Against the background of a society ruled by centuries-old Norse traditions and the strictures of the Catholic Church (first established in Norway in tenth century), Undset tells the story of a headstrong young woman who defies the expectations of her much-beloved father, the lessons of her priest, and conventions of society when she is captivated by a charming and dangerously impetuous man. The courtship of Kristin Lavransdatter and Erlend Nikulaussøn is a far cry from the idealistic romances found in the historical novels of writers like Sir Walter Scott. Although she is betrothed to another man and is living in a convent, Kristin and Erlend manage to escape watchful eyes and give free rein to their love and their sexual impulses. When they are finally allowed to wed, they discover that the repercussions of their rebellious behavior are not easily put to rest.

The version below contains the entire trilogy.  NOTE – we will be reading The Wreath which is the first part.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

 

 

January 2015 – A Lesson Before Dying

Please join us on Wednesday January 28, 2015 when we discuss A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.  We will meet at 12:30 p.m. in room 1550.

From Random House –

Ernest J. Gaines’s award-winning novel is set in a small Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins has returned home from college to the plantation school to teach children whose lives promise to be not much better than Jefferson’s. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson’s godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected.

In a story whose eloquence, thematic richness, and moral resonance have called forth comparisons to the work of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and William Faulkner, Gaines summons the reader to confront the entire bitter history of black people in the South—and, by extension, America as a whole. A Lesson Before Dying is about the ways in which people declare the value of their lives in a time and place in which those lives seemingly count for nothing. It is about the ways in which the imprisoned may find freedom even in the moment of their death. Gaines’s novel transcends its minutely evoked circumstances to address the basic predicament of what it is to be a human being, a creature striving for dignity in a universe that often denies it.

 ~~

December 2014 – The Chimes

Please join us on Wednesday December 17, 2014 when we discuss The Chimes, by Charles Dickens.  We will meet at 12:30 p.m. in room 2537.

From Wiki –

The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, a short novel by Charles Dickens, was written and published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol and one year before The Cricket on the Hearth. It is the second in his series of “Christmas books”: five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840s.

Other discussion topics include: books we’ve read this year and would recommend to others, and books on our wish lists.

November 2014 – Hound of the Baskervilles

Please join us on Wednesday November 19, 2014 when we discuss The Hound of the Baskervilles, by A. Conan Doyle.  We will meet at 12:30 p.m. in room 2537.

Project Gutenberg’s The Hound of the Baskervilles,  Chapter One –  “Mr. Sherlock Holmes”,  by A. Conan Doyle  –

“Really, Watson, you excel yourself,” said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. “I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.

“Interesting, though elementary,” said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. “There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.”

“Has anything escaped me?” I asked with some self-importance. “I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?”

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.”

 Elementary.

October 2014 – The Haunting of Hill House

Please join us on Wednesday October 29, 2014 when we discuss The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.  We will meet at 12:30 p.m. in room 1550.

From Penguin Classics:

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

“

Happy Birthday Book Club!  6 years old.

September 2014 – One Man’s Meat

We will meet to discuss One Man’s Meat by E. B. White on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 at 12:30 p.m. in room 1550.

From One Man’s Meat – Walden:

   Miss Nims, take a letter to Henry David Thoreau.  Dear Henry:  I thought of you the other afternoon as I was approaching Concord doing fifty on Route 62.  That is a high speed at which to hold a philosopher in one’s mind, but in this century we are a nimble bunch.

   On one of the lawns in the outskirts of the village a woman was cutting the grass with a motorized lawn mower. What made me think of you was that the machine had rather got away from her,  although she was game enough, and in the brief glimpse I had of the scene it appeared to me that the lawn mower was mowing the lady.  She kept a tight grip on the handles, which throbbed violently with every explosion of the one-cylinder motor, and she sheered around bushes and lurched along at a reluctant trot behind her impetuous servant, she looked like a puppy who had grabbed something that was too much for him.  Concord hasn’t changed much, Henry;  the farm implements and the animals still have the upper hand.

   I may as well admit that I was journeying to Concord with the deliberate intention of visiting your woods;  for although I have never knelt at the grave of a philosopher nor placed wreaths on moldy poets,  and have often gone a mile out of my way to avoid some place of historical interest,  I have always wanted to see Walden Pond.  The account that you left of your sojourn there is,  you will be amused to learn, a document of increasing pertinence;  each year it seems to gain a little headway,  as the world loses ground.  We may all be transcendental yet, whether we like it or not.  As our common complexities increase, any tale of individual simplicity (and yours is the best written and the cockiest)  acquires  a new fascination;  as our goods accumulate, but not our well-being,  your report of an existence without material adornment takes on a certain awkward credibility.

…

~~  E. B. White  June 1939

Selections from One Man’s Meat for our meeting –

Foreword
Removal
Children’s Books
Salt Water Farm
Movies
The World of Tomorrow
Walden
First World War
Freedom
The Practical Farmer
Maine Speech
Dog Training
The Trailer Park
Once More to the Lake
Memorandum
Intimations (written after Pearl Harbor)
Bond Rally

August 2014 – The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Please join us on Wednesday August 20, 2014 at 12:30 pm when we discuss The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson.  We plan on holding this meeting in the courtyard.   In case of rain or high temperatures, the discussion will be held in the IT Conference room (room 0424).

From Bill Bryson’s  Official Website:

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as “”The Thunderbolt Kid.””

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

~~

July 2014 – Catch-22

We will meet to discuss Catch-22 by Joseph Heller on Wednesday, July 23, 2014 at 11:30 a.m. in room 2609 1550.

From Wiki:

Catch-22 is a satirical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II from 1942 to 1944. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century.  It uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the point of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so that the timeline develops along with the plot.

The novel follows Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp. It focuses on their attempts to keep their sanity in order to fulfill their service requirements so that they may return home.

The phrase “Catch-22” has entered the English language, referring to a type of unsolvable logic puzzle.

~~

 

June 2014 – One of Ours

We will meet to discuss One of Ours by Willa Cather on Wednesday, June 25, 2014.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 1550.

“Willa Cather’s novel, One of Ours chronicles the life of Claude Wheeler, a Colorado man desperate to make more of his life than becoming a farmer like his prosperious father, or a businessman like his older brother. Claude believes a wife, Enid, will settle his soul and give him purpose. But, when Enid goes to China to tend to her ailing sister, Claude goes back to suffering through what he feels is a meaningless existence. However, as soon as World War I becomes a tangible reality for the United States, Claude cannot think of anything better to do with himself than go immediately to a training camp and enlist. After camp, Claude leaves for France, where Claude gains a sense of himself.

One of Ours is gorgeously written. Cather artfully weaves her use of an extensive vocabulary into her calculated prose. As always, Cather describes the land surrounding her characters with such vivid imagery that the characters become a part of the landscape from which they are created. Cather provides the reader with a touching account of a young man forming his identity and discovering his place in the world. The story is honest and consistent and a pleasure to read from the first word to the last!”

from www.examiner.com

 

May 2014 – The Aspern Papers

Please join us on Wednesday May 21, 2014 when we discuss The Aspern Papers by Henry James.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1560.

From Wiki –

The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James’ best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on the letters Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Mary Shelley’s step sister, Claire Clairmont, who saved them until she died.  Set in Venice, The Aspern Papers demonstrates James’ ability to generate suspense while never neglecting the development of his characters.

The full text of The Aspern Papers can be found on http://www.gutenberg.org/files/211/211-h/211-h.htm and an audio version at https://archive.org/details/aspernpapers_0907_librivox.

April 2014 – The Great Gatsby

Please join us on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 when we discuss The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 2140.  This is the selection for the Annual Great Books Student Symposium which will be held May 1, 2014 at Wilbur Wright College.  Good luck to all the participants.

From Wiki:

The “Great American Novel” is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representation of the spirit of the age in the United States at the time of its writing or in the time it is set. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common American citizen. The author uses the literary work to identify and exhibit the language used by the American people of the time and to capture the unique American experience, especially as it is perceived for the time. In historical terms, it is sometimes equated as being the American response to the national epic.

Prof. Donovan Braud has provided the following questions to ponder:

1.   In The Great Gatsby, which is arguably an intermediate text between realism and modernism, Fitzgerald uses a first person narrator that is not the protagonist as well as secondary characters to supply background information about Gatsby. Why does Fitzgerald do this? What does his narrative technique say about identity in the modern period?

2. The Great Gatsby discusses the changing nature of class mobility in America but also introduces elements of race and gender. Using one example (class, race, or gender) show how Gatsby critiques traditional social structures based on these identity categories.

3.  The Great Gatsby is arguably a text about texts – Gatsby as a fictional character in the “real” world of the text. What does Gatsby hope to achieve by rewriting himself? “Daisy” is not acceptable for this prompt – too obvious.

Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

“Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.”

 

March 2014 – The Life of Henry V

Please join us on Wednesday March 26, 2014 when we discuss The Life of Henry V by William Shakespeare.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 2140.

“Henry V is a study of kingship, patriotism, and heroic determination, tempered by tender comedy as Henry courts Katherine, Princess of France.

Henry, the noble and courageous young king of England, decides to invade France, to the throne of which he believes he has a rightful claim.  At Agincourt he leads his army into battle against the powerful French forces and, against all the odds, wins a famous victory.”  ~~ Complete Arkangel Shakespeare

At the Folger website, there is the following visual character/relationship chart.  Please also see the Shakespeare Resource Center for everything Henry V.

It has been suggested we view the 1989 film production of Henry V starring Kenneth Branagh.  Here is a short clip from YouTube.

February 2014 – Jane Eyre

Please join us on Wednesday February 26, 2014 when we discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 2140.

From The Literature Network:

With a new kind of heroine defiantly virtuous, morally courageous and fiercely independent, Charlotte Brontë brought about change in the style of fiction of the day, presenting an unconventional woman to be admired for her ability to overcome adversity. From her humble beginnings as an orphan under the care of a cruel aunt, governess Jane Eyre falls in love with her mercurial employer, the Byronic Edward Rochester. But then dark secrets of Thornfield Hall threaten to destroy everything she’s worked so hard to achieve. First published under her pseudonym Currer Bell, Charlotte’s famous Gothic romance attracted much public attention. People wanted to know who this new and talented writer was. It was highly lauded by such authors as William Makepeace Thackeray, and has since inspired numerous adaptations for television and film, and numerous other author’s works including Jean Rhys’ ‘prequel’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).

January 2014 – Emily Dickinson

On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 we will meet to discuss The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson with an Introduction By Conrad Aiken (by Modern Library New York published by Random House).  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 3601  2140.

Find this moving?

If I can stop one Heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.

Then grab your Index of First Lines, preferably the aforementioned book, and join us on the 22’nd of January.   Please check back after Winter Break for a listing of themes/specific poems to be covered.

Have you heard this before but didn’t know its origin?

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name –  the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

~~  Emily Dickinson

December 2013 – Readers’ Roundup

Please join us on December 18th as we celebrate our past year of Great reads, look forward to next year’s challenges,  and discuss:

• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson.  After a year that began with Anna Karenina and ended with Our Town, with many other ‘Greats’ in between, we turn to something completely different.  From Publishers Weekly, “The story features the Herdmans, the terror of their town.  When Imogene, Ralph, and Galdys muscle in on Sunday School and demand the leading roles in the Christmas pageant, they get their way because the other kids don’t dare challenge them.  Chaos results, as the Herdmans act out their unique version of what happened so long ago in Bethlehem.  And surprise – everyone agrees it was the best Christmas pageant ever.”
• Books we’ve read this year and would recommend to others.  Books on your wish list.

Time permitting –

• Review Library Thing  http://www.librarything.com/groups/bombsbooksoffmybooks

We will meet in room 1560 at 11:30 am.

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

November 2013 – Our Town

Please join us on Wednesday November 20th when we discuss Our Town by Thornton Wilder.   We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1550.

From “The Village and the Stars” by Bill Coden:

“Much in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Our Town celebrates the commonplace, the ordinary, the daily life. The concern with the questions of youth, marriage, and death are our questions, as well as those of George and Emily. The audience is deeply involved in the play for it is Life. We make our own inner connections with the drama. As Goldstone avers, Our Town is a play about belonging to a family, to a community, and to a nation.

Wilder likened his vision to that of an archaeologist: the view of the telescope combined with the view of the microscope.  Our Town, he states, asks a question which is the central theme of the play:  What is the relation between the countless unimportant details of our daily life, on the one hand, and the great perspectives of time, social history, and current religious ideas, on the other?

He wished to depict, and to have us take part in, the life of a village against the life of the stars.  In searching for the best form to express the universality, Wilder decided that drama was ideal. Drama, he thought, typified raising individualized action what we see happening before us into the realm of the universal. Drama is always now, possessing heighten vitality.”

~~

October 2013 – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Please join us on Wednesday October 30th when we discuss The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.   We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1550.

From Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. –

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in full The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, also spelled Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The work is known for its vivid portrayal of the psychopathology of a “split personality.”

The calm, respectable Dr. Jekyll develops a potion that will allow him to separate his good and evil aspects for scientific study. At first Jekyll has no difficulty abandoning the drug-induced persona of the repulsive Mr. Hyde, but as the experiments continue the evil personality wrests control from Jekyll and commits murder. Afraid of being discovered, he takes his life; Hyde’s body is found, together with a confession written in Jekyll’s hand.

The phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” has become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves. An 1888 play was made of the novel, and several popular film versions highlighted its horrific aspects, from a 1921 adaptation starring John Barrymore to a 1971 B-movie, Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, featuring a female alter ego.  Stevenson’s story continued to inspire riffs on the theme into the 21st century.

Happy Birthday Book Club!  5 years old in October.

September 2013 – The Age of Innocence

Please join us on Wednesday September 25th when we discuss The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.   We plan on holding this meeting in the courtyard.   In case of rain or high temperatures, the discussion will be held in room 1550.

The Age of Innocence first appeared in four large installments in The Pictorial Review,  from July to October 1920.  It was published that same year in book form by D.  Appleton and Company in New York and in London.

From the New Yorker,  February 13, 2012
A Rooting Interest
Edith Wharton and the problem of sympathy  by  Jonathan Franzen  –

The beauty of “The Age of Innocence” is that it takes the long view. By setting the main action in the eighteen-seventies, Wharton is able, at the end, to bring Newland and Ellen into a radically altered world in which their earlier plight can be seen as the product of a particular time and place. The novel becomes the story not only of what they couldn’t have–of what they were denied by the velvet-gloved conspiring of their old New York families–but of what they have been able to have. Its great heartbreaking late line, which takes the measure of Newland’s unfulfilled desire, is delivered not by Newland or Ellen but by the woman whom Newland has stayed married to. Wharton, in the novel, certainly shines what she once called “the full light of my critical attention” on the social conventions that deformed her own youth, but she also celebrates them. She renders them so clearly and completely that they emerge, in historical hindsight, as what they really are: a social arrangement with advantages as well as disadvantages. In so doing, she denies the modern reader the easy comfort of condemning an antiquated arrangement. What you get instead, at the novel’s end, is sympathy.

From Wiki – “Keeping up with the Joneses” is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one’s neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to “keep up with the Joneses” is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
…
An alternative explanation is that the Joneses of the saying refer to the wealthy family of Edith Wharton’s father, the Joneses. The Jones were a prominent New York family with substantial interests in Chemical Bank as a result of marrying the daughters of the bank’s founder, John Mason. The Jones and other rich New Yorkers began to build country villas in the Hudson Valley around Rhinecliff and Rhinebeck, which had belonged to the Livingstons, another prominent New York family to which the Jones were related. The houses became grander and grander. In 1853 Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones built a 24 room gothic villa called Wyndcliffe described by Henry Winthrop Sargent in 1859 as being very fine in the style of a Scottish castle, but by Edith Wharton, Elizabeth’s niece, as a gloomy monstrosity.  Reputedly the villa spurred more building, including a house by William B. Astor (married to a Jones cousin), a phenomenon described as “keeping up with the Joneses”. The phrase is also associated with another of Edith Wharton’s aunts, Mary Mason Jones, who built a large mansion at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, then undeveloped. Wharton portrays her affectionately in The Age of Innocence as Mrs Manson Mingott, “watching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward”.

August 2013 – The Cherry Orchard

We will meet on Wednesday, August 28 at 11:30am to discuss The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.   We plan on holding this meeting in the courtyard.   In case of rain or high temperatures, the discussion will be held in the IT Conference room (room 0424).

From Gale Literature Research for Students:

Anton Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard during the last year of his life. Though Chekhov intended the play to be a comedy, when it was first produced by the Moscow Art Theater on January 17, 1904, producer Konstantin Stanislavsky insisted it should be played as a tragedy. Chekhov fought against this portrayal, but to this day, most productions emphasize the tragic elements of the piece.

The Cherry Orchard is a play about the passing of an era. Some critics have said that it is a play about nothing more than a wealthy family that loses its beloved cherry orchard and estate to a man of the rising middle class. The action is quiet in this tragicomedy. Chekhov’s family had lost its home to repossession in 1876, and this may have been an inspiration for the story. He also had inspiration for some of the characters while staying at the estate owned by Stanislavsky’s mother in 1902.

Characters in the Play

Madame Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (lew-BOHF ahn-DREH-ehv-nuh rah-NEHF-skah-yah), a middle-aged woman and the owner of a large estate that has become impossible to maintain because of debts.

Anya (AHN-yah), Madame Ranevskaya’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

Varya (VAH-ryah), the adopted daughter of Madame Ranevskaya.

Leonid Andreyevitch Gayev (lay-oh-NEED ahn-DREH-yeh-vihch GUY-ev), Madame Ranevskaya’s brother, a restless, garrulous, and impractical dreamer.

Ermolai Alexeyevitch Lopakhin (ehr-moh-LIH ah-lehk-SEH-yeh-vihch loh-PAH-khihn), a wealthy merchant whose father was a peasant.

Peter (Pyotr) Sergeyevitch Trofimov (PYOH-tr sehr-GEH-yeh-vihch trow-FEE-mov), an idealistic young student willing to work for the future betterment of humankind.

Boris Borisovitch Simeonov-Pishchik (boh-RIHS boh-RIHS-eh-vihch sih-MEH-ehn-of-PIH-shchihk), a landowner constantly in debt, always trying to borrow money.

Charlotta Ivanova (shahr-LOHT-teh ih-VAH-neh-vah), the governess to the Ranevskys, a young woman who does not know her parentage.

Simeon Panteleyevitch Epikhodov (seh-MYOHN pahn-teh-LEH-yeh-vihch eh-pih-KHOHD-of), a clerk in the Ranevsky household. He is in love with Dunyasha, a maid, who does not return his love.

Dunyasha (doon-YA-sha), a maid who is in love with the brash young footman, Yasha. She dresses well and pretends to be a lady.

Firs (feers), an old footman, faithful to the Ranevsky family for generations.

Yasha (YAH-shah), an insolent young footman, Fiers’s grandson.

A Stranger –  a sickly homeless man who begs Mrs. Ranevskaya for money.

The Stationmaster

A Post-Office Clerk

Guests,  Servants

 

 

 

July 2013 – Monkey

Please join us on Wednesday July 31st when we discuss Monkey by Wu Chʻêng-ên; translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1560.   This book is a partial translation of the book Journey to the West by Wu Chʻêng-ên.

From the I-Share catalog description:

Wu is the reputed author of the great comic-picaresque novel Journey to the West, or Monkey, as Arthur Waley entitled his translation, which has often been compared for its content and its influence on tradition with Don Quixote in European literature. Wu was a native of Huai-an (in Kiangsu), and in the local history published there in 1625 the statement is made about his authorship of the work. However, this was unknown by the general reading public for over 300 years, perhaps partly because Wu died without children to perpetuate his claim to fame. Though the story of the novel is loosely based on the historical pilgrimage of a Chinese Buddhist monk, Hsuan-tsang, to India in the years 629–645 to obtain Buddhist scriptures, in fact the narrative bears little relation to what actually happened. Instead, it is fabricated from the many popular tales told by storytellers, which over the years embellished the factual chronicles left by Hsuan-tsang with many Chinese beliefs about the monsters and demons of the lands he passed through. The novel teems with humor, invention, and memorable characters, and has been a great favorite with Chinese audiences for centuries. Comic book versions of its stories can be found in Chinatowns all over the world.

June 2013 – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Please join us on Wednesday June 26th when we discuss Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m.  in room 1550.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this:  spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”  — Annie Dillard

From New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974:

In 1971 I wanted to try my hand at prose. My journals were full of facts that I used to write Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), a sustained nonfiction narrative about the fields, creeks, woods, and mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. Because I ”named” its chapters, in the style of 19th-century narratives, many reviewers took it for a book of essays. The book attempted to describe the creator, if any, by studying creation, leading one writer to call me (wonderfully) “one of the foremost horror writers of the 20th Century.”

~~

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).”

Our May meeting also served as a farewell to outgoing Great Books Coordinator Lyn Ward-Page:

Lyn Ward-Page at our May meeting. She stands before all the books the Book Club has read since October 2008

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.

November 2012 – The Awakening

Please join us on Wednesday, November 28, 2012 when we meet to discuss The Awakening by Kate Chopin.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 2609.

From www.booksshouldbefree.com, “Kate Chopin’s 1899 novella The Awakening is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin’s novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century. ”

From Literature and Its Times, by Joyce Moss and George Wilson,
“Kate Chopin draws heavily from her own personal history in the composition of her novella.  The situation and setting for the book come entirely from the pages of Chopin’s own life.  Like her main character, Chopin married into a wealthy Creole family and moved with her husband to New Orleans.  The Chopins also maintained a summer residence on Grand Isle.  Oscar Chopin, like Léonce Pontellier, worked as a broker and maintained an office on Carondelet Street, New Orleans’ version of Wall Street. (Actually he was a cotton factor – an agent, a banker, and a broker all under one roof.)  The author also showed the same defiant independence that she gives to her character.  She liked to stroll alone throughout New Orleans, smoking cigarettes, a prohibited way to walk for women of her social standing.  In The Awakening, Edna remarks, “I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much – so many rare little glimpses of life” ( The Awakening, p.105 (Chapter 36)).  Long walks are a way in which Edna asserts her independence, as Chopin did in real life.”

October 2012 – Dracula

Please join us on Wednesday, October 31, 2012 when we meet to discuss Dracula by Bram Stoker.  We will meet at 11:30 a.m. in room 2609.

Where were you when you first met him?  In a dark theater?  On your television screen?  Or in a book?  This October 31st we will meet him as he was meant to be encountered – in Dracula by Bram Stoker.

From LitLovers –

The punctured throat, the coffin lid slowly opening, the unholy shriek as the stake pierces the heart—these are just a few of the chilling images Bram Stoker unleashed upon the world with his 1897 masterpiece, Dracula. Inspired by the folk legend of nosferatu, the undead, Stoker created a timeless tale of gothic horror and romance that has enthralled and terrified readers ever since.

A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation, language, and culture to become one of the most popular novels ever written. It is a quintessential tale of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters ever born in literature: Count Dracula, a tragic, night-dwelling specter who feeds upon the blood of the living, and whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, and the beautiful.

But Dracula also stands as a bleak allegorical saga of an eternally cursed being whose nocturnal atrocities reflect the dark underside of the supremely moralistic age in which it was originally written — and the corrupt desires that continue to plague the modern human condition. (From Barnes & Noble edition.)

“Stoker gives us the most remarkable scenes of horror…Each is unforgettable, and no movie has quite done justice to any of them.”
Stephen King

Happy Birthday Book Club!  4 years old in October.  Aww.

September 2012 – Rhinoceros

Please join us on Wednesday September 26, 2012 as we discuss Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 1625.

“Rhinoceros takes place in a small village, where the inhabitants are transforming, one by one, into rhinoceroses. Only Bérenger, the central character, seems immune to the metamorphosis. Written in the aftermath of World War II, the play served as a harsh criticism of the circumstances that led to widespread acceptance of fascism and Nazism and still serves as a pointed critique of conformity and mass culture.”

~~ The Greenhouse Theater Center    Chicago, Illinois

August 2012 – The Eyre Affair

We will meet on Wednesday, August 29 to discuss The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.   We plan on holding this meeting outside but will have a room in case of rain or high temperatures.

From NoveList Plus:

Special Operative Thursday Next is in a battle to the death against Acheron    Hades, evil genius and murderer. It’s bad enough that Acheron murders real people,    including police officers. But he takes it one step further and commits the    truly heinous act of murdering literary characters as well. If he gets his hands  on the original edition of a work, the murdered literary character will disappear  from every copy in the world. A heinous act indeed! And he’s after Jane Eyre!

Thursday is a Literary Detective. Her father was a Colonel in the ChronoGuard,  until he decided the service was “morally and historically corrupt” and went  rogue. Now he stops time to pop in for a visit every now and then, even saving  Thursday’s life on one of his visits. Thursday is assigned to the case of a  missing Martin Chuzzlewit, stolen from the Dickens Museum. But when Acheron Hades is  identified as the thief, she is transferred to the Search and Containment group.   They are short-handed and need her help, especially since she knows Acheron.   An English lecturer at Swindon before embarking on his life of crime, he even  tried to hit on her while she was there. This shoot to kill unit is hot on the    trail of the Master Criminal, but the capture fails, and her boss is killed  instead.

Thursday is sent to recover with a SpecOps unit in Swindon, which is why she’s    there when Acheron goes after Jane Eyre. Not only has Thursday met Acheron —  she has also met Rochester! In fact, using a special Prose Portal device, she’s  been inside the book of Jane Eyre upon more than one occasion. What’s more, she doesn’t care for  the ending. Why couldn’t Jane and Rochester have gotten together after all?   Can something be done about that? But first she has to battle Acheron and save  the life of Jane Eyre.

—  by Bonnie Kunzel, Youth Services Consultant for the State Library of New Jersey

Jasper Fforde has a website where you can find a handy guide to the many references/terms used in the book:

http://www.jasperfforde.com/reader/readerjon2.html

It should be fun.

July 2012 – Travels with Charley

It’s not too late to get on the road this summer and re-discover America.  Please join us on July 25th when we meet to discuss Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 1560.

From Janet West of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill –

Writer John Steinbeck embarks on a journey across America beginning in New York on Labor Day, 1960 and ending in the same place upon his return in January of 1961. He equips himself well before his journey (a bit too well, he notes, taking among other things, reams of paper he was not to use for note-taking and writing). He places an order for a pickup truck equipped with a little house on it, like a small camper or the cabin on a small boat; he names his means of purveyance Rocinante after Don Quixote’s noble steed. Steinbeck packs fishing rods, rifles, cooking implements and shelf-stable foods, reference books, clothes and bedding, and chooses as his traveling companion his French poodle Charley. Charley loves to travel and has a fierce bark, making him a good watch dog, even if he is very bad at fighting. Steinbeck also knows that a dog is invaluable for breaking the ice with strangers, in addition to providing company along the journey.

Wanderlust is a strong desire for or impulse to wander or travel and explore the world.  John Steinbeck had it.  Do you?

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. …  Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over.  A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys.  It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness.  A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.  And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.  We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

—  John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

 

June 2012 – Walden

We will meet on Wednesday June 27, 2012 to discuss Walden by Henry David Thoreau.  Join us at 11:30am in  room 1560.

Walden, in full Walden; or, Life in the Woods,  series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.

Relatively neglected during Thoreau’s lifetime, Walden achieved tremendous popularity in the 20th century. Thoreau’s description of the physical act of living day by day at Walden Pond gave the book authority, while his command of a clear, straightforward, but elegant style helped raise it to the level of a literary classic.  —  from the Encyclopædia Britannica

For our discussion on the 27th, the focus will be on the following chapters:
Economy (only the first 25 or so pages)
Where I Lived and What I Lived For
Solitude
Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors
The Pond in Winter
Conclusion

May 2012 – Brideshead Revisited

On Wednesday, May 30, 26, 2012 at 11:30 am, we will meet in Room 2808 to discuss Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

Magill Book Review: In 1943, Captain Charles Ryder, a successful architectural painter turned soldier, finds his company stationed at Brideshead, the country estate of Lord Marchmain. As overpowering memories of the previous 20 years arise, he begins an account of the family. The memoir is highly selective, omitting the 10 years between the decline of his friendship with Sebastian Flyte, son of Marchmain, and the beginning of his romance with Julia, Sebastian’s sister. Charles accounts for the emphasis and imbalance by explaining that with the Marchmains he had felt most alive and inspired.

When Charles had gone to Oxford 20 years earlier, after an unhappy, lonely childhood and adolescence, he gravitated toward the group of English Catholics surrounding Sebastian, a group known for their eccentricities, hedonism, and aestheticism. Surprised by their warmth and kindness, the agnostic Charles found their way of life novel and appealing.When he became close to Sebastian’s family, he observed that as members of a small Catholic aristocratic minority they were alienated, socially and psychologically, from the mainstream. For Charles they became a kind of substitute family, and they helped launch him into a successful career in art. Yet he drifted away from them after his friend Sebastian sank hopelessly and inexplicably into alcoholism.Years later, returning by sea from a tour of Latin America, Charles encounters Julia Mottram, Sebastian’s sister, and they begin a romance. Having recognized his mediocrity as an artist, Charles views marriage to Julia as his best chance for happiness. Although she wishes to marry him, her religion prevents it in a way he finds difficult to understand.

The novel, tinged with sentimentality, portrays the Catholic aristocracy in England between the two World Wars. Much more than a class novel, it probes the psychological effects of religious affiliation upon adherents. Written in an ornate and poetic style, it depicts in a compelling way the vulnerability of human beings.

Could it be two years have passed since we read The Loved One?  While we were focused on The Loved One, a book titled Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead by Paula Byrne, had just been published March 30, 2010.  For the true Waugh/Brideshead fan, this is a must read:

 As much as this is a biography of Evelyn Waugh, it is also the biography of the family that inspired his best-known novel, Brideshead Revisited. The product of a middle-class upbringing and a middling public school, Waugh’s experience at Oxford was an awakening. There, he fell in with a sophisticated crowd that had at its center the glamorous Hugh Lygon, second son in an aristocratic Catholic family. Scandal-ridden as well, the eminent patriarch, Lord Beauchamp, was forced to leave the country because of homosexual activities. Waugh became close friends with several of Hugh’s sisters, whose doings seemed to exemplify the spirit of the age. Their splendid house Madresfield Court—called Mad for short—offered the template for Brideshead, just as Hugh provided the model for Sebastian Flyte.                                        –Mary Ellen Quinn, Booklist

Anyone remember this?

 

Pulitzer Prize Awards 2012

The 96th annual Pulitzer Prizes were announced April 16, 2012 by Columbia University.

All the 2012 Pulitzer prize winners are listed at
http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/2012

GreatBooker1: “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
GreatBooker2: “To the curious incident of the prize for fiction.”
GreatBooker1: “There was no Pultizer Prize awarded for fiction.”
GreatBooker2: “That was the curious incident.”

For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).  No award

Nominated as finalists in this category were:
“Train Dreams,” by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm.

“Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf), an adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13-year-old heroine wise beyond her years.

“The Pale King,” by the late David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown and Company), a posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.

Which finalist would have garnered your vote this year?

More from NPR.

h/t  Karen

 

Reading in the Age of iPads

There was an interesting presentation this week at Oakton entitled, “Reading in the Age of iPads: How Technology is Redefining What It Means to Read” given by Naomi S. Baron.  Professor Baron shared her research into how people read.  In her presentation, she provided research results showing that more students retained printed material better than material presented electronically.  Ironically, what helps students the most is marginalia – writing notes in the margins.  Most students don’t do this simply because it reduces the resale value of the text.  There are certain types of reading that lend themselves to reading electronically.

For those of you interested in e-Books and the impact they are having, please see this article.   The report, “The rise of e-reading,” presents research on:

“The growing popularity of e-books and the adoption of specialized e-book reading devices are documented in a series of new nationally representative surveys by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that look at the public’s general reading habits, their consumption of print books, e-books and audiobooks, and their attitudes about the changing ways that books are made available to the public.”

2012 Great Books Symposium

The Great Books program at Oakton Community College will participate in the Seventh Great Books Symposium at Harold Washington College on April 25, 2012.  The featured selection will be Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Best of luck to Professor Lyn Ward-Page and to all the students involved.

Local Bookstore Recognized

Publishers Weekly has named the The Book Stall at Chestnut Court the bookstore of the year.  Read the story here.  Congrats to Roberta Rubin for all that she does.

April 2012 – Billy Budd

We will meet on Wednesday April 25, 2012 to discuss Billy Budd by Herman Melville.  Join us at 11:30am in  room 2145.

The story follows the Billy Budd as he is pressed into service on the HMS Bellipotent, part of the British Navy. Melville’s Billy Budd is characterized by youthful innocence, openness and natural charisma. He is adored by the crew. The story of Billy Bud reaches a turning point when a jealous crewmate falsely accuses Billy Bud of a conspiracy to mutiny. The novel is often interpreted as a classic battle between good and evil. —  from  http://www.americanliterature.com

From Wiki:
Publication history
In August 1919 a Columbia faculty member named Raymond M. Weaver, doing research for what would become the first biography of Melville, paid a visit to Eleanor Melville Metcalf, granddaughter of the author. She gave him access to all the surviving records of her grandfather: manuscripts, letters, journals, annotated books, photographs, and a variety of other material. Among these papers Weaver was astonished to find a substantial manuscript for an unknown prose work entitled, of course, Billy Budd. After producing a text that would later be described as “hastily transcribed”, Weaver published the first edition of the work in 1924 as Volume XIII of the Standard Edition of Melville’s Complete Works (London: Constable and Company). In 1928 he published another, different version of the text which, despite numerous variations, may be considered essentially the same text.

A second text, edited on different principles by F. Barron Freeman, was published in 1948, as Melville’s Billy Budd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). This edition tried to remain closer to what Melville actually wrote but unfortunately relied on Weaver’s text with all its various mistaken assumptions and textual errors. All the many subsequent reprints of Billy Budd up through the early 1960s are, strictly speaking, versions of one or the other of these two basic texts.

In 1962, Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., established what is now considered the correct text; it was published by the University of Chicago Press, and contains both a “reading” and a “genetic” text. Most editions printed since then follow the Hayford-Sealts text.

We will be using the University of Chicago text:
Billy Budd, sailor : (an inside narrative)
by Herman Melville ; edited from the manuscript
with introd. and notes by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr.,
University of Chicago, 1962

Encyclopedia Britannica

From CNN: “Encyclopedia Britannica to stop printing books”
It was first published in Scotland in 1768.

March 2012 – Great Expectations

Please join us on March 21, 2012 to discuss Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 2138.

From Great Expectations – A Novel of Friendship by Bert G. Hornback:

Great Expectations was the thirteenth of Charles Dickens’s fifteen novels.  The novels that immediately precede it – Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities – are often called Dickens’s “dark” novels because of the grim and seemingly pessimistic picture they paint of English society.  Dickens was the great social critic among the nineteenth-century novelists (he invented the novel of social criticism, one might well say), and for many readers, both then and now, novels like Bleak House, and Little Dorrit were his greatest achievements.

But Great Expectations is also a novel of social criticism, and is one of the great achievements in the history of fiction.  It is a brilliantly conceived attack on the vices that most threaten human society: selfishness and greed.  Dickens had attacked these evils before, of course; as he saw it, “the arrogant and the froward and the vain” of this world “fretted and chafed and made their usual uproar”.  The alternative to such noisy self-centeredness, he said, was “a modest life of usefulness and happiness” that would work against selfishness and greed, and maybe even restore society.  For Dickens, the connection between usefulness and happiness was “natural and rational” as well as heroic.

In Great Expectations the hero is the novel’s first-person narrator, Philip Pirrip – who “call[s] himself Pip”.  The life of selfishness and greed that he exposes is his own.  Having survived it – having learned usefulness and thus found happiness – he writes this novel, for us.  It is a rich, complex work.  It is often comic, as Pip the narrator looks back at his younger self and his adventures.  It is often painful, too, as he reflects on the vanity and arrogance into which he fell.

Great Expectations is an indictment of the values by which our society conducts its often antisocial affairs.  It is Dickens’s first great frontal attack on the class society, an attack that he continues in his next novel, Our Mutual Friend.  The values that Dickens affirms, in this novel as in all his other works, are those of friendship and love.  More so than anything else he wrote, Great Expectations is a novel about friendship: about Pip’s learning friendship.  For Dickens, friendship is useful, and it brings – creates – true happiness.  It is a relationship, however, not a possession – and there’s the difficulty of it.  Love is something you give – and give up.

… No one in Great Expectations is asked to give up his life for his friend; the novel is not so melodramatic as that.  Rather, the giving up in Great Expectations is carried to a spiritual and philosophical level.  Joe Gargery, the simple blacksmith, articulates the idea: “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together”.

The greatness of Great Expectations is in that line.  It explains the wonderful human drama Dickens has created as Pip’s life, and given to us.  If we understand what Joe says, we understand the novel – and we understand life the way Dickens would have us understand it.

Great Books Chicago

An FYI from Anne:

The Great Books Foundation’s annual event will feature a Things Fall Apart theme.  Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart will be discussed and much more.

Great Books Chicago will be held April 27–29, 2012.

For more information visit www.greatbookschicago.org

Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens!

Today were celebrate  Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday.  From Wiki –

“Charles John Huffam Dickens; (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature’s most iconic novels and characters”

Check out the Google Doodle.

Interesting article in the Washington Post,  Five myths about Charles Dickens.

Also, PBS will present a new production of Great Expectations on Sundays, April 1 & 8, 2012 (check the local listing for times) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood on April 15th, 2012.

Great Expectations
Episode 1 (60 minutes); Episode 2 (120 minutes)
Great Expectations tells the story of Pip the battered orphan boy, who rises from blacksmith’s apprentice to gentleman under the patronage of a mysterious benefactor. Gillian Anderson (Bleak House), David Suchet (Hercule Poirot) and Ray Winstone star.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
One 120-minute episode
An adaptation and completion of Charles Dickens’ last novel left unfinished at his death, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood is a psychological thriller about a provincial choirmaster’s obsession with 17-year-old Rosa Bud. Cast includes Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) and Julia MacKenzie (Miss Marple).

February 2012 – Our Man in Havana

Please join us on February 29, 2012 to discuss Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 1849.

From Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature:

Our Man in Havana  by Graham Greene, published in 1958 and classified by the author as an “entertainment.” Set in Cuba before the communist revolution, the book is a comical spy story about a British vacuum-cleaner salesman’s misadventures in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Although many critics found fault with the book’s overly farcical style, it was also admired for its skillful rendering of the Cuban locale. A film with the same title was made in 1959, starring Alec Guinness and Noël Coward, among others.

January 2012 – Sister Carrie

Please join us on January 25, 2012 as we discuss Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.  We will meet at 11:30 am in room 2145.

Sister Carrie is the story of young Carrie Meeber, who comes to Chicago in 1889 to make her fortune. Chicago is not as she envisions it, however. In her desire for material possessions and success, she begins and leaves two different illicit affairs. By the close of the book, she is in New York, having embarked on a highly successful stage career. Even this success does not bring her happiness; the novel closes with Carrie rocking in her chair, considering her sense that there is more to life than she has experienced.

Author Diane Andrews Henningfeld

Sister Carrie was published in 1900 by Doubleday.  The following describes the bumpy path to publication:

Dreiser, the Publishers, and the Critics

When Frank Norris, the famous American novelist and an editor for the Doubleday publishing house, read Sister Carrie, he realized immediately that he had found something exceptional. In a letter to Dreiser, Norris described his conversation with other Doubleday editors regarding the book: “I said, and it gives me great pleasure to repeat it, that it was the best novel I had read in M. S. [manuscript] since I had been reading for the firm, and that it pleased me as well as any novel I have read in any form, published or otherwise” (Norris in Swanberg, p. 86). With Frank Doubleday in Europe, Walter Hines Page, a partner in the firm and the boss during Doubleday’s absence, signed an agreement with Dreiser to publish the book.

When Doubleday returned from Europe, he was not as enthusiastic about the novel as Norris and Page had been.  According to Doubleday’s moral policies, lust and vice were acceptable in fiction only if they were punished in the end to provide the reader with a wholesome moral lesson.  Carrie, not punished in the slightest, enjoyed a frivolous existence with two lovers and became a successful actress living a life of luxury, a plot that could be construed as promoting unchastity as a way of life.  Doubleday also disapproved of the book because he found it vulgar in its portrayal of rude and uneducated characters, and also because he felt its pessimism was offensive.  Despite Doubleday’s dislike of the novel, an agreement had been signed and Dreiser had no intention of letting his first novel go unpublished.  After extensive wrangling over the terms of the contract, Sister Carrie was published on November 8, 1900.

Sister Carrie. Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 2: Civil Wars to Frontier Societies (1800-1880s).

Read-alikes from NoveList:
The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson

Holiday Sampler Notes 12-14-2011

We began by sharing poems which were meaningful to us in some way.  These are the poems that were recited:

“Snow Day” by Billy Collins
“Mary” by Philip Appleman
“Dance in the Dark of the Year” by Susan Urban and Margaret Nelson
“Joseph” by Tania Runyan
“Angel at the Nativity” by Tania Runyan
“A Harvest Of People” by Max Coots
“New Year Song” by Mendelssohn
“Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Next we shared the books we have given, received, or touched us in some way:

Janet: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
A witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language.

Anne: Spoke about going through her dad’s belongings and found letters Anne herself had written to her grandmother.  Anne re-read the words she had written as a nine year old child recounting gifts she and her sister had received.

Lyn – discussed the beauty of A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.  The poetry of Tania Runyan (a former Oakton student) include: Delicious Air, Simple Weight, and A Thousand Vessels.

Karen – Didn’t pinpoint a specific book but discussed the love of reading she had been infused with from an early age.

Kathy – Also talked of a love of reading and a cherished collection of her mother’s books.

Carol – Has given books as presents but nothing stands out above others.

Mary Anne – Each year has given her children books at Christmastime.  Last year she found more unusual books to satisfy her family’s varying tastes at AbeBooks’ Weird Book Room.  Their website: http://www.abebooks.com/books/weird/index.shtml

Rose – ‘passed’ during the meeting to conserve time.  A right jolly old elf has shared that The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough is on her wish list.

Mary Anne discussed the list at artofmanliness.com called: 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library for possible gifts for those men on your gift lists.  Many of our book club books are on this list – making spirits bright!

We then moved onto our discussion of eReaders.  There were many opinions flying through the air.  Overall, most of the regulars do not have eReaders but for various reasons;  some like the feel of a book, difficult to share books with friends and family, publisher’s price points inching closer to bound books.

Reasons to own an eReader include: convenience (many books taking up little space), adjustable fonts, variety beyond belief both free and for purchase.

Books being read/best reads of 2011 listed:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
The Space Between Us: A Novel (P.S.) by Thrity Umrigar
On Writing by Stephen King
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Many, many thanks to those who make our book club such a source of friendship and learning.  Enjoy the holidays – and to all a good night.

December 2011 – Holiday Sampler

UPDATED:  Wonderful discussion yesterday!  Various notes will be posted here later today.  Happy Holidays to all.

Please join us on December 14th as we share our thoughts on the following topics:
– Favorite autumn/winter/seasonal poem
– Books as gifts: Cherished book you received as a gift, gave as a gift, or is on your gift list.
– E-readers – Yay or Nay?
– What have you read this year that you would recommend
– Review the library loan procedures.

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.

November 2011 – Long Day’s Journey Into Night

We will meet on Monday November 28, 2011 to discuss Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill in room 2846.

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in 1888, not far from the theaters that the O’Neill family came to know so well. For decades, his famous father, actor James O’Neill, toured the American theater circuit, his family dutifully in tow. Eugene grew up despising what he perceived as the trite, commercial nature of the industry around him, and when he turned to writing drama in 1912, he resolved to write a very different kind of play for American audiences. The troubles of his Irish-American family inspired many autobiographical portraits in his works, and he was lauded as the finest tragedian the United States had ever produced. When he died in 1953, he left behind among other great plays Long Day’s Journey into Night, which was so personal that he ordered it not to be published until twenty-five years after his death.

Source: Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them.  Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 3: Growth of Empires to the Great Depression (1890-1930s).

The dedication reads:

For Carlotta, on our 12^th Wedding Anniversary

 

Dearest: I give you the original script of this play

of old sorrow, written in tears and blood.  A sadly

inappropriate git, it would seem, for a day

celebrating happiness.  But you will understand.  I

mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which

gave me the faith in love that enabled me to

face my dead at last and write this play—write it

with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for

all the four haunted Tyrones.

 

These twelve years, Beloved one, have been a

Journey into Light –into love.  You know my gratitude.

And my love!

                                                                  GENE

 

Tao House

July 22, 1941.

Our discussion leader has suggested viewing the 1962 film adaptation of Long Day’s Journey Into Night featuring:

• Katharine Hepburn- Mary Tyrone
• Ralph Richardson- James Tyrone, Sr.
• Jason Robards, Jr.- James Tyrone, Jr.
• Dean Stockwell- Edmund Tyrone
• Jeanne Barr – Cathleen

October 2011 – Edgar Allan Poe

Please join us on October 26, 2011 in room 2609 for what Edgar Allan Poe called his tales of ratiocination: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget”  (1845) and “The Purloined Letter” (1845).

From the Encyclopædia Britannica:

The first detective story was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe, published in April 1841. The profession of detective had come into being only a few decades earlier, and Poe is generally thought to have been influenced by the Mémoires (1828–29) of François-Eugène Vidocq, who in 1817 founded the world’s first detective bureau, inParis. Poe’s fictional French detective, C. Auguste Dupin, appeared in two other stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1845) and “The Purloined Letter” (1845). The detective story soon expanded to novel length.

The traditional elements of the detective story are: (1) the seemingly perfect crime; (2) the wrongly accused suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points; (3) the bungling of dim-witted police; (4) the greater powers of observation and superior mind of the detective; and (5) the startling and unexpected denouement, in which the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained. Detective stories frequently operate on the principle that superficially convincing evidence is ultimately irrelevant. Usually it is also axiomatic that the clues from which a logical solution to the problem can be reached be fairly presented to the reader at exactly the same time that the sleuth receives them and that the sleuth deduce the solution to the puzzle from a logical interpretation of these clues.

FYI for all you Poe aficionados – Scarce and spectacular Poe first editions coming soon to auction via Sotheby’s-New York, October 20, 2011.  Full article here.

Ratiocination: the process of logical reasoning.