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Our various reading discussion groups generally meet on the Fourth
Thursday of the month. The Clubs change focus and players from
time-to-time, but there's usually a group here on the fourth Thursday
if you want to just drop in. Do you have an interest in starting
another reading group? Just let us know.
| Classics Club Welcome to the Classics Club! Our new
book group leader Christine, a former young
adult librarian, will be revisiting those timeless books that almost
certainly showed up on your high school and college reading lists. Be
reunited with an old friend (or an old foe!), or finally get yourself
acquainted with one of those titles that it seems as if everyone in the
world has read but you. We guarantee a spirited discussion!
UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale Thursday, September 23, 7 pm In a startling departure from her previous novel,
respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here
a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the
United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried
to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is
a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have
jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless
Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who
turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told
by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells
how the chilling society came to be. --Library
JournalMary Shelley: Frankenstein Thursday, October 28, 7 pm
The epic battle between man and monster reaches its greatest pitch in the famous story of Frankenstein. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor himself to the very brink. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship …and horror. –GoodReads.com |
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| PAST DISCUSSIONS John Steinbeck: Cannery Row Thursday, August 26, 7 pm Steinbeck's
enduring novel explores life near the sardine fisheries of Monterey,
California during the Great Depression. The stories of Doc, a marine
biologist; Mack, the leader of a group of hobos; Dora, the proprietor
of the local whorehouse; and others interweave to paint a convincing
portrait of the lives of those misunderstood, marginalized people who
still exist at the fringes of American life today. |
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| Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities Thursday, July 29, 7 pm “It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times….” |
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| Harper
Lee:
To Kill a Mockingbird Thursday, June 24, 7 pm One of the best-loved stories of all
time, To Kill a Mockingbird
has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than
thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis of an enormously
popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the
twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping,
heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South
poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and
savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father -- a
crusading local lawyer -- risks everything to defend a black man
unjustly accused of a terrible crime. |
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| Frances Burney: Evelina Thursday, May 27, 7 pm Frances Burney's first and most
enduringly popular novel is a vivid,
satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of
fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London. As she describes
her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love,
Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an
image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual
aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens,
theatre visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a
shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and
social ambitions--as well as attracting the attention of the eminently
eligible Lord Orville. Evelina, comic and shrewd, is
at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new
consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late
eighteenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full
notes to this edition help make this richness all the more readily
available to a modern reader. |
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