We met on June 1, 2024 at Dick’s. Most of us preferred Tinkers, Harding’s debut novel. Eden was far from Carolyn’s favorite. She found the author’s use of language to be almost a barrier to the story. He seemed to idealize and glorify the island residents who suffered from intellectual and/or physical limitations, which seemed…
On March 22, 2024 we met at the Larkes. Renee suggested this book. I remember Grace and I trying to force an alternative – the fictionalized account about the midwife in Maine. We did not prevail. This saga portrays a worldly/saintly/mythic Amazonian woman, Marie, based on an historical abbess, as being in direct contact with…
Discussed April 22, 2022 Tommy Orange’s wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind….
The story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization — copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning…
The original ‘Great American Novel’, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a masterful study of obsession.
Begins in 1910 and traces God’s relation to four generations of American seekers: Clarence Wilmot, a clergyman in Paterson, NJ who loses his faith. Son, Teddy, becomes a mailman who retreats from American exceptionalism into a life of ordinariness. Teddy’s daughter, Esther, becomes a movie star, an All-American goddess. Her son, Clark, is possessed of…
