Book Discussion
Mondays, 2:00-3:45 PM
Room: W105

Join five LLI members as they lead lively discussions of contemporary titles and old classics.

Harriet Malbin, LLI’s I Love to Read Facilitator, has been coordinating LLI book discussions for many years.  She is an avid reader who enjoys all kinds of books.

January 28 – Michael Mugnolo – Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

They wanted facts. Facts!  They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything!  Marlow cried.  In the author’s most famous book, a tale of cowardice and courage, of sin and redemption, we learn the facts through a collage of accounts, observations, statements, conjecture and rumors as disjointed in time as they are in the nature of their sources.

February 4 – Judith Hinkle – The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

We meet Holden Caulfield., Salinger’s adolescent American icon, just before Christmas in the early 1950’s.  He is a confused lonely 16 year old who has just been kicked out of boarding school and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Holden makes  unsuccessful attempts to escape his angst through a series of misadventures but is ultimately saved by “the catcher in the rye”.

February 11 – Celia Maddox – Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)

Rebecca might seem a familiar tale, but Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 best seller has a few new interpretations up its velvet sleeve-about its self-effacing narrator, the remote widower who takes her to Manderly and the dead wife who haunts them.  Rebecca also offers clues to Du Maurier’s own peculiar character and her relations with her old illustrious family.

* There is no class on Presidents’ Day – Monday, February 18.

February 25 – Heather Hopkins – Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Bethia Mayfield is growing up in a Puritan community on Martha’s Vineyard.  Longing to break free of its restrictions, she explores the wilds of the island and forms a deep friendship with a Wapanoag chieftain’s son.  Inspired by the true story of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard, Brooks combines in-depth research of the time with luminous descriptions of natural beauty.

March 4 – Richard Auwarter – A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

He cried out “Where is God when I really need him?”  This is about the agonizing spiritual crisis of C.S. Lewis when his beloved wife Jove died of cancer.  His love, grief, pain and sorrow were so shattering that his basic Christian beliefs were now called into doubt.  He then realizes that “real life” is ahead of him with an increased understanding of the richness of love.