Alexandria Campus Book Club

Stones & Pyramids

2011-11-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club met on September 16th to discuss Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone.

The Club also adopted Henning Menkel's The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases for the next selection. Wallander may be familiar to readers from the recent PBS Series. The Club will convene again early in the Spring Term to discuss the book. Happy reading!

Cutting for Stone

2011-07-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club will read Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone (PS3622 E744 C87 2010) for its autumn selection. The book club will meet in an off-campus location sometimes in September.

For more information contact Sylvia Rortvedt.

"The story is a riveting saga of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, born of a tragic union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.But it's love, not politics -- their passion for the same woman -- that will tear them apart and force Marion to flee his homeland and make his way to America, finding refuge in his work at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him, wreaking havoc and destruction, Marion has to entrust his life to the two men he has trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him."

Good Soldiers: Radio Version

2011-03-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

In February, the Book Club read David Finkel's The Good Soldiers. NPR's This American Life recently broadcast a version of one the chapters of the book -- in which the soldiers recount their experiences home on leave, read as monologues by actors.

Ever wondered what you might do with 18 days of rest after serving 15 months in combat? Reporter David Finkel followed one group of soldiers in Iraq for 15 months, and reported all of it in his book The Good Soldiers. Here is our radio version of one of the chapters in his book, where we hear actors read aloud what soldiers and families of soldiers told David about their break. (21:42 min)

Listen now on the This American Life site:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/429/will-they-know-me-back-home (Begins at 3.00)

Proof

2011-02-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

The Alexandria Book club turns to a play for the spring. We'll be reading Proof by David Auburn.

The Book Club will meet Friday April 1 (no fooling!) for snacks and discussion.

Good Soldiers -- stay in touch too much?

2011-02-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

Picking up on one of the themes discussed at the Feb 4th book club meeting, the New York Times today ran an article discussing the pros and cons of a fighting force that is almost instantly connected, 24-7 with home:

"They can partake in births and birthdays in real time. They can check sports scores, take online college courses and even manage businesses and stock portfolios.

But there is a drawback: they can no longer tune out problems like faulty dishwashers and unpaid electric bills, wayward children and failing relationships, as they once could."

And the pros and cons go both ways:

"The easy communication can relieve fears — but also stoke them. Once families become used to hearing from troops daily, lapses in communication can send imaginations racing. "

Read the article on the NYT site. Or from the Library's ProQuest database (log-in required from off-campus).

The Good Soldiers

2011-02-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Alexandria Campus book club met on Friday Feb 4 to discuss David Finkel's The Good Soldiers. Fortune magazine called the book "the most honest, painful, and most brilliantly rendered account of modern war I've ever read." Book club members agreed to book was a compelling, if harrowing read.

Finkel writes for the Washington Post and is married to Alexandria campus faculty member Lisa Hill.

Buzz off Little Bee

2010-09-25T06:29:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club met on Sept 24th to discuss Chris Cleave's novel Little Bee.

The book received rapturous reviews in the American Press -- the Washington Post said it will "blow you away", Library Journal called it "astonishing and flawless", The Boston Globe said it was "vividly memorable and provocative...heartwarming and heartbreaking."

Book club members were not quite as impressed, finding the novel "mannered", "improbable," "unbelievable," and "melodramatic."

Published under the title The Other Hand in Great Britain, the novel received more mixed reviews. The Independent thought it was "shocking, exciting and deeply affecting," The Guardian called it "an ambitious and fearless gallop." However, the Daily Telegraph found it "faultlessly relevant, but ultimately cloying," and the Times said it was a "clotted and hysterical tale... implausible... and absurdly over-written," calling one of the main characters "batty, bizarre and inconsistent and unsympathetic."

This reader thought the luckiest character in the book was Andrew who, by committing suicide in an early chapter saved himself from having to endure the narrative to the end.

Never Let Me Go -- now in cinemas

2010-09-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

The 2006 Book Club selection, Kauzo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go has been made into a film that will be released today, Sep 15th.

Salon.com says the film "captures the slightly seedy and rundown reality of '70s and '80s British life in astonishing and even tragic detail; this is more like a period piece than a science-fiction movie. In fact, it resembles a Merchant-Ivory tragedy about doomed love in a war zone, except that the doomed love involves human guinea pigs and the war zone is not some tropic zone but the alleged good intentions of medical science."

NPR says of Ishiguro: "Born in Japan and raised in Britain, Ishiguro is fascinated by how people adapt to life in repressive societies. (It's no coincidence that three of his six novels turn on World War II.) Whether home is Never Let Me Go's ominous boarding school or the country estate of a British fascist (as in The Remains of the Day), the novelist's characters do what is expected of them. In the novel, Kathy's final statement is that she drove off "to wherever it was I was supposed to be.""

The film version of Never Let Me Go stars Keira Knightley, who must have an affinity for the Book Club selections. She also starred in the film adaptation of Atonement.

Summer Reading

2010-07-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club will discuss Chris Cleave's Little Bee for its first selection in Fall 2010.

*Starred Review* Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal” center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah’s Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee’s elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself. --Booklist

The Book Club will meet off-campus in September to discuss Little Bee.

Stealing Horses

2010-02-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

The Alexandria Campus Book club met on Friday 26 Feb to discuss Per Petersen's novel Out Stealing Horses.

Is the narrator a sympathetic character or someone hard to connect with? Does the novel have an inconclusive ending or is its ending, like life, simply an end and not a conclusion? Was the attention to detail tedious and repetitive or an engrossing slice of life? Has anyone ever read a Scandinavian novel that wasn't bleak?

These and other questions exercised 8 Alexandria faculty members who engaged with Sullivan's story of isolation, alientation and loss.

The next book club selection will be John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt. Copies available in the Library.

Reading The Reader

2009-12-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club met on campus for the first time on Thursday 19 November to discuss Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. Discussion focused on Hannah's decision to go to jail rather than admit her inability to read, and a more general discussion on shame in western culture -- especially in matters of educational accomplishment.

Although several book club members also saw the film, no one took a bath at the meeting.

Book Club Date Change!

2009-11-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

The Book Club will meet again on campus on Thursday Nov 19th in room 158 at 2pm.

This is a change from an earlier date which conflicted with an author talk on campus the previous week.

This month's selection is Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (also a motion picture with Kate Winslett). Copies of the book are still available in the Library, and a copy of the film is also on Reserve. You are encouraged to come if you have read the book, or seen the film or both!

It's the Romance and Suspense, stupid!

2009-09-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

A multi-disciplinary group of Alexandria Campus faculty* met on Fri 25 September to consider the Teen/ Young Adult phenomenon Twilight. We concluded the combination of romance, suspense, and short sentences plus vampires account for the popularity of an otherwise somewhat unintersting book. And some of us liked the film better.

From Vampires to Nazis...

The Book Club next takes up Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (also a major motion picture!). The Book Club's next meeting will be at 2pm on campus on Thursday 12 November.

* we're not all English profs! Teaching disciplines represented included history, mathematics, biology, economics, physical education, and political science. Plus librarians.

Twilight is a like a vampire...

2009-09-15T11:46:00.001-07:00

...it sucks.

So why is the Book Club reading this trashy teen novel? Because teen-agers (and college-aged young adults, and a good many normal adults) are also reading it. What is the appeal of this abstinence-parable (or rape fantasy depending on where you're standing) and why has it sold over 20 million copies? And how did it become a blockbuster movie -- of which which even Peter Travers of Rolling Stone says "The love story has teeth."

(even if some of us thought less love story and more bad vamps would be an improvement):

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com went on to pronounce "If you care about pop culture at all, you owe it to yourself to see Twilight." The Alexandria Campus Book Club, dutifully caring about pop-culture, will discuss Twilight on Friday 25 September. Contact Sylvia Rortvedt for more info.

The Allure of Vampires

2009-08-21T06:02:00.001-07:00

Why do vampires occupy such recurring and enduring place in our popular culture?

The Sunday Times takes on that question in its review of another vamp pop cult hit, True Blood:

"Vampires are different. Vampire movies transcend their blood-soaked genre in ways that werewolves, mummies and even the misunderstood progeny of Dr Frankenstein can only dream of. Each generation plunders the bloodsuckers’ coffin, pulling out symbols and stories to retell in urgent contemporary narratives that draw in politics, culture and — of course — sexuality.

“Vampire stories were created when it was impossible to write about sex openly, so they arrived laden with sexual metaphors,” says the psychologist Andrew Bates. “At the same time, I think they deal with more existential themes: what happens when you die and how it feels to be the outsider. That’s why they’ve survived the opening up of sexuality in art — although they’ve had to face some pretty grim ironic retelling along the way. Today, there’s a huge mainstream interest in the romanticism of longing and losing they represent.”

Except Twighlight is really all about sex (or at least not having it in high school...).

If Stephanie Meyers doesn't strike you as the Emily Bronte of our age, you might return to the literary fountainhead of vampire stories: Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Twighlight

2009-07-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

What do the new kid in school, smoldering romance, vampire orphans, chaste teenagers, and supernatural danger have in common? They are the themes explored in Stephanie Meyer's wildly successful debut novel Twighlight.

Why is the Alexandria Campus Book club reading a runaway teen-age/ young-adult romance? Twighlight's wild popularity among NOVA students means that this is what our students are reading. Think of it as competitive intelligence.

Also now a major motion picture. Surely no one would watch the film instead of reading the book -- teen idol cast notwithstanding.

The Book Club meets to discuss Twighlight on 25 Sept 2009.

It's Aliens!

2009-04-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club wrapped up the year with something new: science fiction short stories by James Tiptree. Tiptree, who was actually McLean resident Alice B Sheldon (she adapted the name from a jam jar:

wrote acclaimed short stories in the 1960s and 70s dealing with issues of gender, society, consciousness and (usually) death, generally in dystopic present or future settings.

A die-hard few Book Group members met on Friday 24 April to discuss the remarkable and strange stories, the remarkable and strange life of the author, and the (to some of us at least) remarkable and strange genre of science fiction.

As the Book Club looks forward to another interesting year of reading and discussion -- we want to hear from YOU, the Alexandria Campus faculty and staff. Please send suggestions for Book Club titles to Sylvia Rortvedt.

When you're not sure how to end a story after an all-nighter on amphetimine high, try aliens!

Was Gertrude Stein a Fascist?

2009-02-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

Alexandria Campus faculty came to grips with that question after reading Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. Although author Janet Malcolm doesn't exhaustively explore Gertrude Stein's political life, she does inform us that Stein was an opponent of Roosevelt, deplored the New Deal, felt that people should take responsibility for their own economic well-being, and was a vocal supporter of Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Right-wing politics were the way to go among the literary avant garde in mid-century. Stein's near contemporary TS Eliot once described himself as an "Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a monarchist in politics." Ezra Pound moved to Italy in the 1930s and was an outspoken supporter of Mussolini. Evelyn Waugh converted to the Catholicism and staunchly supported conservative social and political positions throughout his life (Waugh was convinced, for instance, that Picasso was a hoakster who was taking people in).

Was Stein a fascist? Despite being Jewish, and living in a straightforwardly lesbian relationship with Alice B Toklas, she managed to survive (and indeed prosper) in occupied France throughout WWII.

A Superior Form of Authenticity

2008-11-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club read Margaret Atwood's collection of short stories-cum-novella.

Several of the stories/ chapters might call to mind previous Book Club selections.

'My last Duchess', for instance, in which the teenage protagonist reads and critiques Browning's poem in light of her own experience, is reminscent of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

'Moral Disorder' , 'Monopoly' and 'White Horse' find the principal characters decamped to a bohemian rural paradise trying their amateur hands at farming, recalling the (again) fashionable back-to-nature organic movement at the heart of Omnivores Dilema.

Atwood says of her work that it is "not autobiography. If it was, people would say I was lying. It's the paradox of our times. If you put fiction on the front, they say, 'Ah, but we know it's really about you,' and if you put autobiography, they say, 'Well, of course she's trying to make herself look good and she has left this out and left that out.'" A tension between autobiography and fiction, the real and the contrived confronted previously in The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

Family relationships pervade the stories. Relationships between parents (present and absent) and children bring to mind both A Hole In The Earth as well as The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. Those between siblings recall Atonement.

Harold Bloom once said all literature profited or suffered from an "anxiety of influence". he probably didn't think of his criticism in the conext of the Alex Book Club reading list, but it's true nevertheless.

Disordered, Morally Speaking

2008-10-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club turns to short stories for the second selection of the Fall Term, reading Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder.

AS Byatt reviewed the book in the Washington Post and said, in part:

"Moral Disorder is a perfect title -- apparently one from a novel abandoned by Atwood's husband, which fits. And the work, with its isolated tales, some in the first person, some in the third, is a perfect shape for contemplating life and death. It is like our memories: There are things that persist in refusing to be forgotten, are as clear as the day they happened, whereas all sorts of more apparently significant things vanish into dust or persist only in old newspapers and fashion magazines. A life, unlike a biography, does not unfold in a neat progression. Nor is it entirely incoherent. Each of these stories coheres round a defined patch of Nell's life, and each has its own cluster of brilliantly described and unforgettable things, which are as important as the people...

This tale, like all these tales, is both grim and delightful, because it is triumphantly understood and excellently written."

Check out a copy from the Library or visit your local book-shop.

More on Dinaw Mengestu

2008-08-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

Dinaw Mengetsu, author of the Book Club's fall selection The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, is interviewed on NPR and also on the Penguin Book site. Learn more about the author and his inspiration for this story of African immigrants set in Logan Circle.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

2008-07-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

Get ready for fall & start reading the book club selection this summer.

Perfect for the beach. Buy it from Amazon today.

The novel takes place in Logan Circle -- perfect destination for a field trip!

Chimes At Midnight

2008-06-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

Orson Welles's 1967 film The Chimes At Midnight, based on Shakespeare's character of Sir John Falstaff, is now available for viewing in its entirety on YouTube. The film stars Welles as Flastaff, John Gielgud as Henry VI, as well as Anne Rutherford and Jeanne Moreau.

Thanks to Dianne Daily for discovering this!

Book Club goes local

2008-04-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

The book club turns to a novel set in Washington DC to kick off the fall season. The Washington Post says of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears:

"One of the glories of the literature of exile is the sharp outlines a writer can bring to the contours of his adoptive society. For readers who were born in the writer's host country, such literature can uncover things that might otherwise be obscured by familiarity. Dinaw Mengestu's praiseworthy first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, draws upon this principle. Take, for example, this wide-eyed reflection by Sepha Stephanos, the Ethiopian émigré who narrates the story, on riding the Washington Metro: "The red-line train bound for the suburbs of Maryland is delayed. The trains of this city continue to marvel me, regardless of how long I live here. It's not just their size, but their order, the sense you get when riding them that a higher, regulatory power is in firm control, even if you yourself are not." Most native Metro users probably wouldn't greet a delay with such transcendental musings.
But Stephanos lacks an outlet -- aside from his friends -- to channel his thoughts. The novel underscores this element by contrasting his plight with that of the 19th-century writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who is a favorite author of a character in the novel. Unlike the blue-blooded Frenchman who returned to his homeland and was celebrated for his insights into American life, the struggling Stephanos seems unlikely to return to his native country or win admiration for his perspicacity.
As a teenager, Stephanos fled Ethiopia to escape fallout from the military coup that ousted Haile Selassie in 1974 and thrust the Dergue -- a junta that ruled the country until 1987 -- into power. Stephanos's father -- a prosperous lawyer in Ethiopia's capital -- attracted the ire of a government determined to snuff out all so-called counter- revolutionaries. After witnessing his father's brutal treatment at the hands of the Dergue's henchmen, Stephanos acceded to his mother's wishes and fled Ethiopia. Eventually, he made his way to Washington.
Mengestu's tightly written novel largely unfolds in alternating chapters of past and present. The story is structured around a period of unrest in Logan Circle when gentrification led to evictions. For Stephanos, the influx of moneyed white people into the predominantly black neighborhood where he resides and runs a grocery store is a welcome event. He hopes that his business might improve along with the neighborhood and that his loneliness might be alleviated by a white academic and her biracial child, whom he befriends.
Unfortunately, vandalism aimed at Logan Circle's new residents prompts the Tocqueville-loving scholar, with whom Stephanos is enamored, to leave the neighborhood. And so, while Stephanos mulls over the events that vaporized his hopes for a more fulfilling life, he finds himself in a self-reflective purgatory, searching for a new raison d'être. Indeed, the title of the novel comes from the last lines of Dante's Inferno, where the poet, emerging from hell, is granted a glimpse of heaven before he makes his way into purgatory.
Apart from its lean sentences, which very rarely overreach, Mengestu's novel benefits from his plausible depiction of characters caught on the seams between two worlds -- rich/poor, black/white, citizen/foreigner. This lends an urgency to their ruminations that believably cleanses their conversation of small talk. In other words, the big ideas of Stephanos and his two African friends about racial politics in America, the necessary accouterments for success, and why colonels make for better dictators than generals don't come off as stilted but as natural byproducts of their exiled condition.
With its well-observed characters and brisk narrative pacing, greatly benefited by the characters' tension-laced wit, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is an assured literary debut by a writer worth watching."

In the Shadow of No Towers

2008-04-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

If you enjoyed Art Spiegelman's Maus you may enjoy his latest book In the Shadow of No Towers.
Publisher's Weekly said of it "an artful rant focused on the events of 9/11 and afterward by a world-class pessimist ("after all, disaster is my muse"). The artist, who lives in downtown Manhattan, believes the world really ended on Sept. 11, 2001—it's merely a technicality that some people continue to go about their daily lives. He provides a hair-raising and wry account of his family's frantic efforts to locate one another on September 11 as well as a morbidly funny survey of his trademark sense of existential doom. "I'm not even sure I'll live long enough," says a chain-smoking, post-9/11 cartoon-mouse Spiegelman, "for cigarettes to kill me." The book is a visceral tirade against the Bush administration ("brigands suffering from war fever") and, when least expected, an erudite meditation on the history of the American newspaper comic strip, born during the fierce circulation wars of the 1890s right near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan."

In the Shadow of No Towers is available in the Library at PN6727.S6 I5 2004.

Book Club Hits with Henry!

2008-04-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

Current (and some previous!) faculty and staff gathered on Friday 18 April to discuss the adventures of Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff. Discussion ranged from history to current politics to family dramas (both fictional and real-life!) to poetry and also films.

(above Falstaff, in Stratord-upon-Avon)

Some of us previewed My Own Private Idaho and enjoyed the adaptation of Shakespeare's dynastic struggle & coming-of-age story to the street hussler culture of 1990s Portland.

(above, Keaneau Reeves -- a modern day Hal?)

If the better part of valour is discretion, why is that line so often taken out of context? And why does it generate 286,000 Google hits? Do all those webmasters know Falstaff was referring to playing dead?

And how is that related to discrete mathematics? This is truly a multi-disciplinary book group!

Unfortunately, we didn't have any Falstaff Beer:

Thanks to Kaya Ford for hosting!

Henry IV, a tale for our times?

2008-03-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Book Club will revisit a sometime neglected classic in the Spring -- Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I. Does the story of a wayward son coming clean, inheriting his father's throne and waging a belligerent war of conquest have anything to tell us about the current occupant of the White House?

The Bushes may not be Lancastrians, and the presidential elections may not be the Wars of the Roses, but does Prince Hal's story resonate with modern politics? A scion of an aristocratic house spends a dissipated youth, reforms and wins political office, assumes his father's position and under the influence of his father's self-interested courtiers wages a war of conquest in a foreign land.

Hal, as the warrior-king Henry V was successful in his French ambitions. But even this success was short lived:

"Of France and England, did this King succeed:

Whose State so many had the managing,

That they lost France, and made his England bleed:"

One should also remember that Henry IV was a usurper. One wonders if any "sad and solemn priests" sing still for the political career of Al Gore?

Fitzgerald flops

2008-02-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

F Scott's lush, complex, and sometimes unlikable second novel The Beautiful and Damned drew a record small number of book club fans. The Jazz Age is truly dead.

Nevertheless, die-hards gathered in Arlington on a mild & sunny 8 Feb to discuss class, mobility, the tragedy of wasted talent and the wages of leisure, as well as a lively consideration of Fitzgerald's oeuvre, followed up with speculation as to who might be Fitzgerald's modern-day spiritual heirs (the Beats?). Highballs were also consumed.

Your faithful correspondent promises not to take it personally that The Beautiful and Damned was a bust. We promise to return to our regularly scheduled program of gay confessional literature and themes of social despair.

Book Club Hits the Jazz Age

2008-01-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

Mix the martinis, find your cigarette holder and get ready to spend some quality time in the dissolute world of the jazz age.

The Book Club turns to a minor classic this winter, reading F Scott's Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: "One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best-known works, The Beautiful And Damned is a glittering novel set against an era of intoxicating excitement and ruinous excess. Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a scathing, ironic tale whose fictional couple parallells the real-life relationship of Fitzgerald and his wife, from its romantic beginning to its tragic end. It remains to this day a devastating portrait of insatiable greed, ruthless ambition, and wasted talent."

Fitzgerald's works are now available in the public domain, and can be accessed via Project Gutenberg or Google Books.

The Book Club meets Friday Feb 8th.

Book club discusses Maus

2007-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

15 members of the Alexandria Campus Book Club (including our youngest member -- who has not yet attained her first birthday!) gathered at the Matt Todd's apartment in Washington DC's Glover Park.

Discussion ranged from the American Indian Museum to Selling the Holocaust, to the graphic novel/ comic genre to the the symbolism of anthropormorphic animals. We also drank some wine.

Read more about Spiegelman on his website or vist the comicpedia.

Suggestions are welcome for our next title.

Alexandria Book Club reads Maus I & Maus II

2007-11-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Book club tackles the Graphic novel for the second book of the year, reading Art Spiegelman's Maus.

The book club is all about breaking new ground: not only have we branched into the graphic novel genre, we've branched right out of Virginia! The November 16th book club will meet at Matt Todd's house in Washington DC.

(why are the Nazis portrayed as cats? Hmmm...)

First Meeting of the Year Waffles

2007-10-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

No, we didn't waffle over our opinion of The Road (see below) but we did enjoy pecan & blueberry waffles at Visual & Performing Arts & Public Services Dean Tony Stanzo's house. After enjoying made-to-order waffles from Chef Stanzo, we got down to a interesting and wide-ranging discussion of the The Road which no one seemed to like exactly but everyone found very interesting, thought-provoking or engaging.

The Book Club's next book(s) will be Art Spiegelman’s Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus 2: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. There are two copies of each on Reserve for the Book Club in the Library, and two more sets on order. This graphic novel won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award in 1992.

Next Meeting: Friday 16 November.

Atonement on the Big Screen

2007-09-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

In 2003 we read Ian McEwen's Atonement. Next month the film version will come to a cinema near you.

The Sunday Times loved the book. It gave mixed reviews to the film.

What We're Reading Now

2007-09-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Alexandria Campus Book Club resumes on 5 October. We'll be reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

"The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

Join us on October 5th for a discussion. Copies of the novel are available for check out in the Library.

What We've Been Saying

2007-09-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Four years of reading and discussing books has produced both heat and light, mirth and controversy. The one conclusion we can draw is that the Alexandria Campus Faculty and Staff are an opinionated bunch. Our first book, Atonement generated much interest -- some readers loved it while others loathed it. One member compared Ian McEwen to Jane Austen. Another member found the novel futile and depressing. General favorites included the inspiring Untouchables (which we discussed over Indian food) and the creepy Never Let Me Go (which didn't lend itself to any tasty treats!).

The discussion of A Hole in the Earth was enlivened by the presence of the author, Robert Bausch (at left), who teaches at the Woodbridge Campus.

Occasionally we stumble across a theme -- such as when our discussion of Reading Lolita in Tehran led to the adoption of Nabakov's Lolita for a future discussion.

We've courted controversy: in 2006 we read Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain and many of us watched the "gay cowboy movie". In 2004 we tackled the disurbing and controversial The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things even as questions began to surface in the press about the identity of the author JT Leroy (or Laura Albert).

Nonfiction has not been ignored. We delved into pedagogy with The Peaceable Classroom (is it significant that the only book we read about teaching drew the smallest attendance?). Food proved popular as we followed the food chain in Omnivore's Dilema and considered the world of restaurant reviews in Garlic and Sapphires.

Some discussions led to interesting revelations -- like the faculty member who said "I hated reading this book! This must be how my students feel when they have to read books I assign them that they don't like!" Others expressed appreciation for finding the time and impetus to read books they wouldn't otherwise have read. And almost all of our readers report enjoying getting to know Alexandria colleagues from other discplines. Book club members have included mathemeticians, librarians, deans, English teachers, ESL teachers, biologists, counselors, business and marketing folks, communication teachers and more.

What We've Been Reading

2007-09-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

The book club begins its fifth year in 2007-08. Here's what we've read so far:

2006-07

Never Let Me Go, by Kauzo Ishiguro

Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India, by Narendra Jadhav

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

The History Boys: A Play, by Alan Bennett

2005-06

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

2004-05

A Hole in the Earth, by Robert Bausch (Woodbridge Campus)

The Peacable Classroom, by Mary Rose O’Reilley

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, by J. T. LeRoy

Conclave, by Robert Pazzi

2003-04

Atonement, by Ian McEwen

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri