11 posts tagged “book”
Summer's over for most of us, now is time to get back to our old routines, including our monthly chat around a book and a beer. The next date is listed below, and shortly I will be able to give you the dates for the whole year that will coincide (nearly) with the dates for our brand new film club. What am I talking about?
The film club was initially Anne's idea ( or was it Jacques...), anyway, the idea is that five or six times during the year, an English language film ( classic or modern, British, American et cetera...) would be shown here in the Mediathèque in Sanary, followed by a debate (in English) about the film.
The films would always be shown on a Saturday afternoon and we already have a list of films which we're allowed to show. Further information will be posted here, watch this space!
Our Literature club would always be on a Friday and the following day the film club (a part from one exception), this keeps things nice and simple.
Now down to the nitty gritty, as we're so organized this year, wouldn't it be great to choose our five books for the season 2008/2009? For our first meeting, I know we're all going to talk about our summer reads and that should be that should be fun, but lets put our thinking caps with regards to the other books that we might all enjoy. Maybe everyone could choose a couple of books, email to me and I'll print the titles out and we'll just do a lucky dip and the first five drawn would be the ones we'd read.
NEXT CHAT: Friday 26th September 2008
Place: L'Hotel des Bains, Sanary
Time: 19hrs
How about changing our chat for May (Friday 30th) to Sunday 1st June? Lets have some input, please.
If anyone esle wants my book after Nicole has finished it, drop me a line.
This is the first time we have chosen a book and then decided to change it, but there has to be a first time for everything!
We aren't reading Gilead anymore as many in the group just weren't enamoured by this book so the book for June is now the book for May.
There was a choice to be made between Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai OR Absurdistan: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart. I received one vote (apart from Jacques who suggested the book) for Absurdistan and three votes (excluding myself) for Hullabaloo. If the others who haven't voted yet, want to express their preference, please do so, but quickly, before Friday, otherwise the Hullobaloo wins.
With regards to our chat, it was mentioned that because our chat is an "English" chat group, shouldn't we just speak just English. I emailed everyone in the group and the feedback I got back was this:-
Our group should remain informal
Speaking French is fine when stuck for a word, or just towards the end of the evening relaxes the atmosphere, especially after the effort made to speak just English for a couple of hours, after all, we are just there to have fun, sharing books and beers and jokes.
I'll check my mails to make sure I haven't forgotten anything and update this post accordingly.
Unputdownable = so interesting or suspenseful as to compel reading.
When do you last read a book that was unputdownable?
Let me know which one of these two books you would like to read for our last chat in June, before the long summer holidays.
Friday night was a all girls night, we were stood up by Alain and Jacques, however that didn't stop us taking about A Thousand Splendid Suns and sundries. We do have some chatterboxes in our midst, especially when we stop swap the language of Shakespeare for that of the language of Moliere, however that's enough diverging of the main topic of this post, which is the book.
I think I can speak for us all when I say that we all immensely enjoyed the book. This book teaches so much about the real Afghanistan, from the political turmoil in Afghanistan and the various factions vying for power to the appalling time had by women living under the Taliban regime, worst than I ever imagined, yet at the same time we learn of the natural beauty of Afghanistan and her fascinating history.
Friday 25th April
19hrs
Hotel des Bains
Book: A Thousand Splendid Suns
I have finished my copy of the book, so if anyone wants to borrow it during the holiday's, just let me know.
29 March 2008
Present.alain, michelle, anne. maria, erlinda, marie christine,
Synopsis of book
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels.Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing. . . .Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there?
As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount:
How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room?
1. Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes?
2. Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before?
3. What really goes on in Ward C?
4. Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards?
The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane. . . .
Discussion on Shutter Island, by Erlinda Petersen
The consensus about the book was that the story was gripping and that the ending was surprising, unexpected. Unlike the usual end of story where all the loose ends are knotted and there is either an unhappy ending or a glorious ending, the reader being allowed to accept the end presented neatly by the author. Lehane gets inside the reader's head and moves things around. Not only are expectations of plot development totally confounded, but the reader comes to realise that his whole perception of what is happening is not at all correct. At book’s end the reader is drawn into a do-it-yourself post-narrative rehash of the events and the characters in order to determine the truth of the story.
After having read the final line of the book, the reader has to flick back through the pages to seek and recognize the clues to support any of the given possible truths. Of the 2 possibilities available to the reader, all felt that any of the two possibilities could be accepted and that, had there been a debate, all the pros and cons for each side would be as convincing as the other. The important thing is that this book forced a process upon the reader to reconsider the events, factors and characters to reach a conclusion. The conclusion by itself is beside the point. It is the process which is important.
For the reader, a compelling experience.
With regard to style, this book is written as a direct narrative, with not too many literary flourishes. It is a tale well told, but it is far from deathless prose. The research into the practice of psychiatry in the 50’s is comprehensive and succeeds in laying out the differing schools of opinion existing at that time with prophetic statements on the future of the science as we now witness it, i.e. the supremacy of pharmaceuticals in the treatment of mental disorders in our day and age..
There were interesting symbols used throughout the book. The use of water as a symbol was notable, water being considered here in a negative light, being the source of unpleasant experiences differing from the usual perception of water as life-giving, fresh, buoyant. Water is an element that goes through the life of the main character from boyhood all the way to the present life and is presented in this book in a heavy, ominous manner as if warning the reader that the story deals with deep, dark secrets of an unpleasant nature. The warden is accurately portrayed as the sinister guardian of the establishment on Shutter Island, very much in the image of a Cerberus, the hound of Hades. Cerberus guarded the gate to Hades and ensured that spirits of the dead could enter, but none could exit .
The pace of the story is relentless, a real page turner, taking the reader through 3 days in the life of the protagonist, Ted Daniels, through an unbelievable tempest, with a swift development of the plot with a destabilizing (for the reader) twist that leaves one in a state of uncertainty by the last page.
Someone stated during the discussion that the germ of madness rests in each individual and that it requires certain factors to trigger the mental breakdown. Applying this to Ted Daniels, with such horrific events happening to him and, his inability to admit to his role in these events, he was finally pushed over the brink of sanity. I often wonder myself whether the factors are indeed the necessary trigger or whether the madness would be manifest regardless, sooner or later? Look at all those elderly eccentrics about us, for instance.
To begin with, I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to all for coming and giving up a part of your weekend to discuss Shutter Island and sundries.
Erlinda is our newest member, she came notwithstanding her broken knee!
I hope our group lived up to her expectations.
Maybe Erlinda would be so kind to write up a synopsis on the evening and the book in question in the near future, when she has time, naturally.
Speaking in public, even in a small group like ours, can be a daunting experience, this can be made worst when one speaks in a language which isn't their own, however when one becomes more confident and more at ease in the company of others that they beginning to get to know, barriers tumble down, and one begins to converse, and little by little, what seemed impossible is now feasible and even enjoyable.
The threshold language barrier has been well and truly leapt over by one and all, there's no stopping you now, you can chit chat to your heart's content*.
Language evolves in sudden leaps, we all have our own particular style, and there's always room for improvement.
The book for April is A Thousand Splendid Suns
The date and the venue are still to be confirmed, updates will appear on the blog or via email.
UPDATE
Next chat will take place the 25th April, at 19.00, Hotel des Bains
The book for May has been proposed by Erlinda.
Gilead
By Marilynne Robinson
I am very fond of American literature, however I am embrassed to say that this novelist is completely new to me.
If The Washington Post is anything to go by, we are all in for a real treat.
They wrote "so serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it."
.
* Heart's content meaning:- as much as you want - one's complete inner satisfaction - until one's heart is content.
Origin (found here http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hearts-content.html)
This phrase is first put into print in Shakespeare's plays and there's every reason to believe that he coined it. He used it in at least two plays:
Henry VI, 1593 - Her grace in Speech, Makes me from Wondring, fall to Weeping ioyes, Such is the Fulnesse of my hearts content.
The Merchant of Venice, 1596 - I wish your Ladiship all hearts content.
It is also found in a letter Shakespeare sent to the Earl of Southampton, as the dedication of the poem Venus and Adonis:
Right Honourable, - I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only, if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But, if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world's hopeful expectation,
Anne has been busy finding us a cosy corner for out next chat. I don't know how she found the time, but she's managed to find a super venue, thanks Anne.
Next Chat
Hotel des Bains, Sanary
Time
Six o'clock sharp (lol)
When
Saturday 29th March
Hope you all can make it.
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