People with English Degrees, Reading Books

For our first book of 2026 -

"The deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is "very probably the funniest book ever written" ( The Sunday Times, London), a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence's and Thomas Hardy's earthy, melodramatic novels. When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent: organization."

"Stella Gibbons was born on January 5, 1902 in London... Raised in a poor and unhappy home, she used her vivid imagination as a means of escape, often telling stories to entertain her younger brothers and other children in the neighborhood. She held numerous jobs including drama critic, reporter, and fashion writer and was a frequent contributor to magazines such as Punch and Tattler, writing short stories and poetry.

"Gibbons is best known for her novel Cold Comfort Farm. A satirical portrait of rural British life in the 1930's, it won the Femina Vie Heureuse prize in 1933...To the delight of readers, this novel has been adapted several times as successful British films.

"Stella Gibbons died on December 19, 1989 in London."

~ quotations from the KCLS website

As always, if you RSVP as a "yes" and then realize you cannot be present after all, please update your attendance record on this site so that we know not to expect you. Thanks.

Photo by: Trinity Kubassek / Pexels

Our Theme Book this year is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, using the John E. Wood translation.

My copy is a paperback with very small printing, so our pages probably won't match. For our first discussion, please read Sections 1 - 4, ending with the Chapter "The Thermometer."

"With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas.

"Thomas Mann was born into a well-to-do upper class family in Lubeck, Germany. His mother was a talented musician and his father a successful merchant. From this background, Mann derived one of his dominant themes, the clash of views between the artist and the merchant.

"Mann's novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), traces the declining fortunes of a merchant family much like his own as it gradually loses interest in business but gains an increasing artistic awareness. Mann was only 26 years old when this novel made him one of Germany's leading writers.
Mann went on to write The Magic Mountain (1924), in which he studies the isolated world of the tuberculosis sanitarium. The novel was based on his wife's confinement in such an institution. Doctor Faustus (1947), his masterpiece, describes the life of a composer who sells his soul to the devil as a price for musical genius.

"Mann is also well known for Death in Venice (1912) and Mario the Magician (1930), both of which portray the tensions and disturbances in the lives of artists. His last unfinished work is The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1954), a brilliantly ironic story about a nineteenth-century swindler.

"An avowed anti-Nazi, Mann left Germany and lived in the United States during World War II. He returned to Switzerland after the war and became a celebrated literary figure in both East and West Germany. In 1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature."
(Bowker Author Biography)

~ quotations from the KCLS website

As always, if you RSVP as a "yes" and then realize you cannot be present after all, please update your attendance record on this site so that we know not to expect you. Thanks.

Photo by: Maria Geller / Pexels

Our Theme Book this year is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, using the John E. Wood translation.

My copy is a paperback with very small printing, so our pages probably won't match. For the second discussion, please read Section 5, through to the end of the Chapter "Walpurgis Night."

"With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas."
~ Quotation from the KCLS website

As always, if you RSVP as a "yes" and then realize you cannot be present after all, please update your attendance record on this site so that we know not to expect you. Thanks.

Photo by: Lorenza Magnaghi / Pexels

Our Theme Book this year is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, using the John E. Wood translation.

My copy is a paperback with very small printing, so our pages probably won't match. For the second discussion, please read Section 5, through to the end of the Chapter "A Good Soldier."

"With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The Magic Mountain takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps–a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an “ordinary young man” who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas."
~ Quotation from KCLS website

As always, if you RSVP as a "yes" and then realize you cannot be present after all, please update your attendance record on this site so that we know not to expect you. Thanks.

Photo by: James Wheeler / Pexels