Classics Revisited

stack of books

Dates, Location

Third Thursday of each month (September—May)
7 pm
Central Library, Board room (3rd floor)
Phone 269-553-7839 for more information

“Reading and re-reading the best books of all time.”

Join these book-besotted local librarians for a lively discussion about favorite classics, both modern and old standards! The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, and Light in August have all been selections - but so have The Essays of E.B. White, Jayber Crow, and All the King's Men.

2012-2013 Schedule:

Middlemarch - September 20, 2010: Eliot, George; 1994; Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Sun Also Rises - October 18, 2012: Hemingway, Ernest; 1969; Hemingway's first bestselling novel, the story of a group of Americans and English on a sojourn from Paris to Paloma, evokes in poignant detail, life among the expatriates on Paris's Left Bank during the 1920s and conveys in brutally realistic descriptions the power and danger of bullfighting in Spain.
Goodbye, Columbus - November 15, 2012: Roth, Philip; 1959; Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters.
The Importance of Being Earnest - December 20, 2012: Wilde, Oscar; On a very immediate level, Earnest explores the nature of the connection between a symbol and what it represents. Both Gwendolen and Cecily assert that they cannot marry men whose names are not Ernest. Their superficiality, however, may obscure the wordplay inherent in the name itself: The word "earnest" and the name "Ernest" sound exactly alike. Is it men who have not been arbitrarily assigned the name "Ernest" by their parents whom the girls reject, or is it perhaps men who are not in "earnest"? In the play itself, it would appear both girls are looking for Ernest, and yet what the name has come to represent for them is the honest and open—that is, the "earnest"—acknowledgment that their suitors are just what they say they are: attractive, stylish, and wicked men of the world.
Selected Essays - January 17, 2013: Orwell, George; 2002; Although best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell left an even more lastingly significant achievement in his voluminous essays, which dealt with all the great social, political, and literary questions of the day and exemplified an incisive prose style that is still universally admired. Included among the more than 240 essays in this volume are Orwell’s famous discussion of pacifism, “My Country Right or Left”; his scathingly complicated views on the dirty work of imperialism in “Shooting an Elephant”; and his very firm opinion on how to make “A Nice Cup of Tea.”In his essays, Orwell elevated political writing to the level of art, and his motivating ideas–his desire for social justice, his belief in universal freedom and equality, and his concern for truth in language–are as enduringly relevant now, a hundred years after his birth, as ever.
Beloved - February 21, 2013: Morrison, Toni; 2006; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’sBelovedis a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past.
Far From the Madding Crowd - March 21, 2013: Hardy, Thomas; 1991; Though this edition basically follows the 1912 Wessex Edition, the editor has collated 12 texts, including the manuscript and Hardy's personal copy of the 1912 Wessex Edition with handwritten revisions, ``to provide a critical text that represents ... Hardy's final deliberate intention.'' Along with this authoritative text, the editor has included Hardy's Wessex map, a map of the novel's setting, biographical and social backgrounds, textual notes of emendations and variants, a history of the text, five examples of the novel's critical reception in 1874-75, nine previously published and well-chosen essays of modern critics, and a judiciously selected bibliography. Schweik has generously annotated the text with footnotes explaining allusions, quotations sources, and terms unfamiliar to modern readers. While this volume can justly claim a place in university libraries, it will, like other Norton critical editions, prove particularly useful as a textbook, especially in colleges with limited library holdings, for its text and accompanying critical essays provide virtually a casebook on Far From the Madding Crowd
Selected Poetry - April 18, 2013: Dickinson, Emily; 2010; Wonderful selection of this great poet's greatest, most popular poems. Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."
Jane Eyre - May 16, 2013: Charlotte, Bronte; 2009; The loneliness and cruelty of Jane's childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in love with her sardonic employer, her discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a heart-wrenching choice. Ever since its publication in 1847, Jane Eyre has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic. It lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect.
Long Summer Read: 100 Years of Solitude - September 19, 2013: Marquez, Gabriel; 2006; One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

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