Monthly Archives: September 2017

Announcement

October meeting announcement

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Our next meeting is Oct. 4th.  For next time, we will read up to the end of Part One – The Gravedigger’s Handbook.

At our next meeting, nstead of reading through this part, I suggest that we each choose one or two sections or images or ideas to read aloud and discuss.

Below are some questions that might help you organize your thoughts.

  • Summary. How would you briefly summarize the main points of this section?  If you had to tell someone what this section is about in less than a minute, what would you say?
  • Insights. What were the key insights you gleaned from this section?
  • What were your main disagreements with the author (if any)? Reading is an active exercise, and disagreement is part of what stimulates our own growth and development.
  • Holes. What did you feel was missing from the section? No book is perfect.
  • Takeaways. What did you “get” from this section? Try to list two or three things you learned .
  • Snippet. What are the sentences or images or events that you found most memorable?
Announcement, English fiction

September meeting report

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At our August meeting, we read and discussed chapter 1 – “Arrival on Himmel Street” up to chapter 2 “Saumensch” of “The Book Thief”.  The page references in this blog are to the 10th anniversary Black Swan edition  of 2016.

For next time, we will read up to the end of Part One – The Gravedigger’s Handbook. Next time will be Wednesday October 4th.

Some of the ideas and themes we discussed in our August meeting were:

  • the final solution, an expression which now has only one, stark, meaning for all Jews and Europeans everywhere.
  • “the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle” (p.28) is perhaps a reference to Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” speech in which he says

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause”