About us
Hello, and welcome to "Lifelong Learners - Las Vegas" (or "L2-LV" for short).
The purpose of this group is to gather folks together who have a growth mindset, and who enjoy discussing sundry, self-help books, podcasts, and talks. If you enjoy reading/listening to books about psychology/human nature, interpersonal relationships, philosophy, and life style change - this is the group for you! We typically meet at least a few times a month to discuss a book, podcast, or talk that relates to self-improvement and living a better life.
If you are constantly yearning to acquire new knowledge that will help you further grow into a wiser, happier, and more fulfilled version of yourself, please join us.
Upcoming events
4
weekly check-in (Ulysses ep 13)
·OnlineOnlineThis a recurring weekly online meetup to discuss what we've read, what we're reading, and what we want to do.
The motivation behind this is two-fold:
- I've put James Joyce's Ulysses on the schedule for December; it has 18 chapters, and I promised readers that we would have a bi-/weekly meetup to review our progress.
- We keep reading books about self-improvement, and yet this 'self' continues to struggle to improve. Maybe this is a chance to join with other strugglers to move forward.
Here's a link to the Ulysses resources that I find useful.
Episode 13, "Nausicaa"
- All the action of the episode takes place on the rocks of Sandymount Strand, the shoreline that Stephen visited in Episode 3.
- A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, is seated on the rocks with her two friends, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The girls are taking care of three children, a baby, and four-year-old twins named Tommy and Jacky. Gerty contemplates love, marriage and femininity as night falls.
- The reader is gradually made aware that Bloom is watching her from a distance. Gerty teases the onlooker by exposing her legs and underwear, and Bloom, in turn, masturbates. Bloom's masturbatory climax is echoed by the fireworks at the nearby bazaar. As Gerty leaves, Bloom realises that she has a lame leg, and believes this is the reason she has been "left on the shelf".
- After several mental digressions he decides to visit Mina Purefoy at the maternity hospital. It is uncertain how much of the episode is Gerty's thoughts, and how much is Bloom's sexual fantasy. Some believe that the episode is divided into two halves: the first half the highly romanticized viewpoint of Gerty, and the other half that of the older and more realistic Bloom.
- Nausicaa attracted immense notoriety while the book was being published in serial form.
- The style of the first half of the episode borrows from (and parodies) romance magazines and novelettes. Bloom's contemplation of Gerty parodies Dedalus's vision of the wading girl at the seashore in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
4 attendees
re-/reading ULYSSES
Divine Cafe at the Springs Preserve, 333 South Valley View Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV, USConsidered by many readers (not just scholars) to be the single greatest work of literature in the English language, Ulysses deserves to be read - or perhaps I should say - YOU owe it to yourself to read this!
But Ulysses is a challenge in multiple ways -
- it's lengthy (600+ pages in my edition)
- it's culturally specific to a time and place (that no one alive today is familiar with)
- it's not just erudite but often obscure
- it's stylistically challenging
These have contributed to its reputation today as a work that borders on the unreadable (without a semester-long seminar on just this novel or a PhD in literature).
But it's also funny, clever, poetic, memorable, and touching.
We're here to help you! Here's the plan:
- you can read this ANY WAY you want; I personally read a chapter naively (without looking up references, notes, etc), and then skim the annotations
- beginning in June, I will be hosting a weekly brief online meetup to talk about what we're read and what we will be reading
- my schedule is to read one chapter a week
- feel free to drop in and out of the weekly meetups as you like
The first five chapters are all relatively short (though you may need to skim chapter 3), so you can totally do this!
This 6 minute video intro (youtube: "Why should you read James Joyce's "Ulysses"? - Sam Slote") provides a good overview.
Stephen Fry (2 minutes) on why Ulysses is his favorite book.
And a review (2 min) explaining why "your Taylor Swift knowledge" won't likely help you.
The last half of the last paragraph of the final episode (7 min audio only) - Molly Bloom in bed contemplating her life (this is Marcella Riordan from the Norton reading available on Amazon & Audible).
This is a nice overview of Joyce's life & Ulysses (15 min).
Finally, a knowledge of Ulysses makes this funnier.
Selected resources:
- text online with annotations: https://m.joyceproject.com/1
- Ulysses guide https://www.ulyssesguide.com/ (in book form: The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses – Patrick Hastings)
- audio book online - RTE: https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/series/32198-ulysses-podcast
- Ulysses Unbound – Terrence Killeen (2022 edition); short summary, commentary, notes on every episode
- Amazon / Audible: https://a.co/d/077P6rKd Norton & Riordan reading
- The New Bloomsday Book 3e - https://a.co/d/0gi1FerH - a classic work of page-by-page commentary; but both more academic & opinionated
- The original readers' guide - James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study
by Stuart Gilbert - still readable & useful.
You do not need to attend any of the weekly sessions to come to this meetup - see you in December!
10 attendees
Past events
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