New Meetup: August Main Meetup
| From: | user 4. |
| Sent on: | Monday, July 13, 2009, 11:44 AM |
Announcing a new Meetup for The Glasgow Book Club!
What: August Main Meetup
When: August 4,[masked]:30 PM
Where: (A location has not been chosen yet.)
It's the last month of summer and we have too mighty books that ponder over such themes of death, treachery, theft, power, oppression, race and, indeed, the very essence of human nature... so nothing too heavy then?! The first of our dual offerings is...
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - It is 1939, Nazi Germany, The Book thief is narrated in the all-knowing, matter-of-fact voice of Death, witnessing the story of the citizens of Himmel Street:
When nine-year-old Liesel arrives outside the boxlike house of her new foster parents, she refuses to get out of the car. Liesel has been separated from her parents - 'Kommunists' - for ever, and at the burial of her little brother, she steals a gravedigger's instruction manual which she can't read. So begins a love affair with books and words, and her illustrious career. In the care of the Hubermans, Leisel befriends blond-haired Rudy Steiner, her neighbour obsessed with Jesse Owens. She also befriends the mayor's wife, who hides from despair in her library. Together Leisel and Rudy steal books - from Nazi book burning piles, from the mayor's library, from the richer people of Molching. In time, the family hide a Jewish boxer, Max, who reads with Liesel in the basement. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters. But one day in the life of Himmel Street, the wail of the sirens comes too late...
Next up is....
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies... 'A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific and 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilization, the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.
Both books offer a rumination on, and examination of, the best and worst of all humanity, our place within it and the very future of its existence. So come along and join us for what promises to be an evening of lively and animated debate.
Happy reading
Lesley and Mhairi
Learn more here:
http://bookclub.meetup.com/634/calendar/10863481/
What: August Main Meetup
When: August 4,[masked]:30 PM
Where: (A location has not been chosen yet.)
It's the last month of summer and we have too mighty books that ponder over such themes of death, treachery, theft, power, oppression, race and, indeed, the very essence of human nature... so nothing too heavy then?! The first of our dual offerings is...
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - It is 1939, Nazi Germany, The Book thief is narrated in the all-knowing, matter-of-fact voice of Death, witnessing the story of the citizens of Himmel Street:
When nine-year-old Liesel arrives outside the boxlike house of her new foster parents, she refuses to get out of the car. Liesel has been separated from her parents - 'Kommunists' - for ever, and at the burial of her little brother, she steals a gravedigger's instruction manual which she can't read. So begins a love affair with books and words, and her illustrious career. In the care of the Hubermans, Leisel befriends blond-haired Rudy Steiner, her neighbour obsessed with Jesse Owens. She also befriends the mayor's wife, who hides from despair in her library. Together Leisel and Rudy steal books - from Nazi book burning piles, from the mayor's library, from the richer people of Molching. In time, the family hide a Jewish boxer, Max, who reads with Liesel in the basement. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters. But one day in the life of Himmel Street, the wail of the sirens comes too late...
Next up is....
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies... 'A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific and 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilization, the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.
Both books offer a rumination on, and examination of, the best and worst of all humanity, our place within it and the very future of its existence. So come along and join us for what promises to be an evening of lively and animated debate.
Happy reading
Lesley and Mhairi
Learn more here:
http://bookclub.meetup.com/634/calendar/10863481/
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