Novels into Film Discussion Group
Books / Literature - Lecture/Discussion
Thursday, January 7, 2010
7:00 PM-8:00 PM
Providence Public Library, Central
Trustees Room, 3rd floor marble staircase area
150 Empire Street
Providence, RI 02903
Google Maps - MapQuest
Novels into Film -- Read the book & watch the movie!
One book/film per month. Meets on the first Thursday evening of the month at 7:00pm.
Sign up for the group by emailing lmiller@provlib.org. The continuation of this group is based on a minimum of five interested participants who meet regularly.
Thursday, January 7: Persuasion by Jane Austen
In her final novel, as in her earlier ones, Jane Austen uses a love story to explore and gently satirize social pretensions and emotional confusion. Persuasion follows the romance of Anne Elliot and naval officer Frederick Wentworth. They were happily engaged until Anne’s friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her that Frederick was “unworthy.” Now, eight years later, Frederick returns, a wealthy captain in the navy, while Anne’s family teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They still love each other, but their past mistakes threaten to keep them apart.
About the Author
Jane Austen (1775-1817) began her writing career composing stories and novels for her family as entertainment. Although she began to write Pride and Prejudice at the age of twenty-one, her first book to appear in print was Sense an Sensibility. All of her novels, including Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, were published anonymously. Austen's identity as an author was announced after her death by her brother, Henry.
ADDITIONAL DATES & TITLES
Feb 4: The English Patient by Michael Onjaatje
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.
March 4: Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
"People mess things up, forget and remember all the wrong things. What's left is fiction," writes Wallace in his refreshing, original debut, which ignores the conventional retelling of the events and minutiae of a life and gets right to the poetry of a son's feelings for and memories of his father. William Bloom's father, Edward, is dying. He dies in fact in four different takes, all of which have William and his mother waiting outside a bedroom door as the family doctor tells them it's time to say their goodbyes. He intersperses the four takes with stories (all filtered through William's mind and voice) about the elusive Edward, who spent long periods of time on the road away from home and admitted once to his son that he had yearned to be a great man. The father and son deathbed conversations have son William playing earnest straight man, while his father is full of witticisms and jokes. In a plainspoken style dotted with transcendent passages, Wallace mixes the mundane and the mythical. His chapters have the transformative quality of fable and fairy tale, and the novel's roomy structure allows the mystery and lyricism of the story to coalesce.
April 1: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he's the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he's left with the absolute essentials--and then those essentials just explode off the page.
May 6: Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Starred Review. Tristran Thorn falls in love with the prettiest girl in town and makes her a foolish promise: he says that he'll go find the falling star they both watched streak across the night sky. She says she'll marry him if he finds it, so he sets off, leaving his home of Wall, and heads out into the perilous land of faerie, where not everything is what it appears. Gaiman is known for his fanciful wit, sterling prose and wildly imaginative plots, and Stardust is no exception.
Additional dates/titles TBA.
Cost: FREE
Suggested Audiences:
Elders, Adult, College
E-mail:
lmiller@provlib.org
Last Modified: January 6, 2010 at 1:47 PM
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Novels into Film Discussion Group
Books / Literature - Lecture/Discussion
Thursday, January 7, 2010
7:00 PM-8:00 PM
Providence Public Library, Central
Trustees Room, 3rd floor marble staircase area
150 Empire Street
Providence, RI 02903
Google Maps - MapQuest
Novels into Film -- Read the book & watch the movie!
One book/film per month. Meets on the first Thursday evening of the month at 7:00pm.
Sign up for the group by emailing lmiller@provlib.org. The continuation of this group is based on a minimum of five interested participants who meet regularly.
Thursday, January 7: Persuasion by Jane Austen
In her final novel, as in her earlier ones, Jane Austen uses a love story to explore and gently satirize social pretensions and emotional confusion. Persuasion follows the romance of Anne Elliot and naval officer Frederick Wentworth. They were happily engaged until Anne’s friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her that Frederick was “unworthy.” Now, eight years later, Frederick returns, a wealthy captain in the navy, while Anne’s family teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. They still love each other, but their past mistakes threaten to keep them apart.
About the Author
Jane Austen (1775-1817) began her writing career composing stories and novels for her family as entertainment. Although she began to write Pride and Prejudice at the age of twenty-one, her first book to appear in print was Sense an Sensibility. All of her novels, including Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, were published anonymously. Austen's identity as an author was announced after her death by her brother, Henry.
ADDITIONAL DATES & TITLES
Feb 4: The English Patient by Michael Onjaatje
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.
March 4: Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
"People mess things up, forget and remember all the wrong things. What's left is fiction," writes Wallace in his refreshing, original debut, which ignores the conventional retelling of the events and minutiae of a life and gets right to the poetry of a son's feelings for and memories of his father. William Bloom's father, Edward, is dying. He dies in fact in four different takes, all of which have William and his mother waiting outside a bedroom door as the family doctor tells them it's time to say their goodbyes. He intersperses the four takes with stories (all filtered through William's mind and voice) about the elusive Edward, who spent long periods of time on the road away from home and admitted once to his son that he had yearned to be a great man. The father and son deathbed conversations have son William playing earnest straight man, while his father is full of witticisms and jokes. In a plainspoken style dotted with transcendent passages, Wallace mixes the mundane and the mythical. His chapters have the transformative quality of fable and fairy tale, and the novel's roomy structure allows the mystery and lyricism of the story to coalesce.
April 1: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he's the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he's left with the absolute essentials--and then those essentials just explode off the page.
May 6: Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Starred Review. Tristran Thorn falls in love with the prettiest girl in town and makes her a foolish promise: he says that he'll go find the falling star they both watched streak across the night sky. She says she'll marry him if he finds it, so he sets off, leaving his home of Wall, and heads out into the perilous land of faerie, where not everything is what it appears. Gaiman is known for his fanciful wit, sterling prose and wildly imaginative plots, and Stardust is no exception.
Additional dates/titles TBA.
Cost: FREE
Suggested Audiences: Elders, Adult, College
E-mail: lmiller@provlib.org
Last Modified: January 6, 2010 at 1:47 PM
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