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Dear Book Club Readers ---

It’s been wonderful reading your insights from exploring the back catalogue reads in our first discussion thread. And it would be so great to know how your back catalogue reading is going this month.

This discussion thread aims to make your conversations around these Big Reads more visible. Keeping with the quest analogy, you might consider this thread to be like a tavern or a check-point where you can rest and discuss these specific works with your fellow travellers.

This is also a fantastic place to compare these great books and discover overlapping themes and commonalities. So let's get these writers talking with one another.

This thread is different from our general reading discussion, which is always an exciting place to discover tons of fascinating new reads. This thread is specific to the things you want to discuss related to your current back catalogue read in a more visible way. You may even wish to put the kind of comments you would leave under specific lectures here too.

Simple format:

  • Put the title of the work you’re discussing at the start of a new comment (e.g. Ulysses, Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Anna Karenina).
  • Indicate your location in the book if applicable. A chapter or page number would be appropriate enough. This signposts spoilers for those who may not have read that far, but also helps fellow readers of the same work get their bearings and understand what part of the narrative you’re referring to.
  • Then let us know your insights, thoughts, questions, meditations, things you loved, things you want clarification on, passages you appreciate, and so on.
  • Enjoy the conversation :)

This thread will also serve as a great way to see the readers joining you on your reading quest and gives you a place to find each other.

Let us know:

What back catalogue book are you exploring at the moment?

Happy reading, folks!

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Comments

Glamaris Cohen

My reading list is all over the place, and I love it! I am currently reading Emerson’s essays, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (after reading and loving Ulysses along with the HLBC last year), Don Quijote in my native Spanish, Tolkien’s The Two Towers (reread), Les Miserables (just started) and Writing Fiction (Burroway). I feel so inspired by this group and grateful for the “company”. I am also keeping up with the Chronological Shakespeare project, and recently realized I had 22 works left to read with 22 weeks left in the year, so I’m committed to one per week. I have come to look forward to my “Shakespeare time” every week! Next up is As You Like It (reread), starting Invisible Man and poetry from different sources every day. I ordered Ben’s recommended Nation’s Favourite Poems so I suppose that will be my poetry source for a while. I couldn’t help it and also ordered Infinite Jest, although I have no earthly idea when I will have time to read it — never mind to copy out poems, journal, and fiction writing ! Thanks, Ben:)

Chris Matheson

Ulysses: James Joyce On the idea that Proteus was aware of the past, present and future, there is this line in Episode 3, page 50, where Stephen is thinking "devour a urinous offal from all dead." At the start of Episode 4, p.53, we see Leopold Bloom eating breakfast "Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." Both references to urinous offal in the space of a few pages..I wonder how these are connected...Chronologically I believe Stephen is having this thought after Leopold Bloom has had his breakfast. Having now read Episode 4 I can see how the organ of choice in Calypso is the Kidney and how this represents purification, change and also turning waste into urine, which also puts me in mind of when Stepehn has to go for a pee on the beach..a symbol of change, of purification but also of weeing. I also just finished Moby Dick with my own book club and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath after reading Janet Malcolm's book about Plath biographies "The Silent Woman". There is an amusing reference in The Bell Jar where Plath is trying to decipher "Finnegans Wake" ..incidentally, she married Ted Hughes on Bloomsday. Next up for me will be Orlando so I'll go back and watch the lectures and do it with my own Book Club.

James Phillips

WAR and PEACE My name is James Phillips. I am a retired Senior Citizen in my 70’s. My previous occupation was as a Physician practicing Plastic Surgery. I have spent my entire life either studying the STEM subjects or business. I do not recall reading any of the classics during my multiple degrees which is why I joined this group. I am currently reading War and Peace which I find entertaining for the story. I read too fast so I am going to have to learn to slow down. I am going to start the 2023 schedule in November. QUESTION: Is there an email to get questions to our reading guide? I look forward to being an active member of this group

Elizabeth Madden

James, hello and welcome to the group. If you click on the picture of Ben beside the heading Hardcore Literature Book club, which you should be seeing alongside this, you can message Ben with your questions.