Book club 2006-07
|
|
|
|
Balzac and
the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie |
Pride and Prejudice by
Jane Austen |
"The Penal Colony"
and other stories by Franz Kafka |
|
|
|
|
|
No Exit by Jean
Paul Sartre |
The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas |
The Bride Price & The Joys of Motherhood
by Buchi Emecheta and A Walk in the Night
by Alex La Guma |
The UHS Book Club started in November
2004. Our group meets in the high school library and
is sponsored by Matthew Murrey, the librarian at UHS.
This year we will meet on the third Thursday or Friday
of the month in the library after school. Be sure to
visit our Book
Club Blog.
The Book Club met on Thursday Sept. 28th to discuss
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. There
were interesting exchanges regarding how effective or
ineffective people felt Dai Sijie was at conveying the
political oppression under which the two main characters
lived. Almost everyone agreed that the writing was skillful,
and that humor and creative scenes were a strong suit
of the book. We also had one of our largest group discussions
with about 12 people in attendance.
The group met on Friday, Oct. 27, to discuss the first
half of Pride and Prejudice. We had another
meeting with many readers attending, and almost everyone
enjoyed the book quite a lot. Many commented on how
skillfully Austen manages to create dramatic tension
through dialogue and character development as opposed
to simple narrative. Another reader remarked on how
interestingly Austen interjects authorial opinion into
the narrator's voice--breaking the old rule of "show
and don't tell." We set our next meeting date and
decided that for December we will read something by
Kafka (but not the Metamorphosis.)
We met on November 17th to wrap up our discussion of
Pride and Prejudice. There was no one who disliked the
book, and everyone seemed impressed with Austen's ability
to probe so many complexities of personality and relationships.
At our meeting on Dec.15th to we discussed "The
Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka. All were struck by
the horrific surrealism of Kafka's story and we talked
about the power of character and the intentionally vague
setting. Our first book of 2007 will be the play, No
Exit by Jean Paul Sartre.
On January 26th, we met to share thoughts about "No
Exit." People agreed that Sarte's idea of portraying
hell as a room with three people was quite creative,
and several commented about how at the beginning of
the play you are not sure who they characters are and
where they are. The realization that they are dead and
in hell comes as a satisfying revelation.
The first half of The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas was what we talked about on Friday,
February 23rd when we met. We are reading a 600+ page
abridged(!) version of the book and had some interesting
conjectures of how the abridgement shapes the experience
of reading the book. Several of us noted how jarring
certain transitions seemed in the book.
We also tossed around our ideas of what Dumas is saying
about the power of the state and its ability to steamroll
over the rights of liberty and justice. We wondered
what Dumas might have to say about the current practices
of holding detainees indefinitely.
We will meet again in late March to conclude The
Count of Monte Cristo. Our next book will be two
books: two African novels. Half the group will read
one and half the group will read the other. At our March
29th meeting we wrapped up our discussion of The Count
of Monte Cristo. Everyone agreed it was a good story,
but several commented that the second half was a bit
slow at times and that the style was pretty predictable.
For April there were THREE choices for members: The
Bride Price and The Joys of Motherhood
by Buchi Emecheta, and Alex La Guma's A Walk in
the Night and Other Stories. Emecheta is a Nigerian
writer and La Guma is South African. When we met in
April to discuss them, everyone commented on enjoying
the chance to read novels from a very different cultural
perspective and setting. We talked a lot about the interesting
interplay of past and present, tradition and change,
European and African, and Christian and indigenous religion
in these works.
Our May choice was Ender's Game, the science
fiction classic by Orson Scott Card. Readers' responses
were overwhelmingly positive toward this novel. All
agreed that it was both well plotted with strong psychological
development. We also noted that it showed some remarkable
prescience about such things as the power of Internet.
Readers also commented on the strong political implications
of the work--militarism, xenophobia, censorship, population
control, child soldiering, etc. At the conclusion of
our meeting we decided that Abarat by Clive
Barker will be our first book for the 2007-08 school
year. Our next meeting will be sometime in September
2007 at 3:20pm in the UHS Library.
|
|
|
|
Enders Game by Orson
Scott Card |
|
| |
|
|
See information from previous years of the UHS book
club by clicking on one the following: 2004-05
, 2005-06.
|
