Reading Group
Do you like Conrad's Heart of Darkness? What about Borges's Babel Library or Cortazar's Hopscotch? If you enjoy reading good novels and also love sharing and discussing your ideas with a congenial group, the Dudley Reading Group is your best option. It doesn't matter if you aren't a specialized critic or have read more than a few books!!! Amateurs, beginners, medium level and master readers are welcome to our monthly sessions. Each session will be a fruitful experience with other readers as we enjoy the pleasure of reading great fiction, poetry, and memoir while also engaging in an aesthetic and critical experience with each work.
For each session a copy of the selected book for the week will be available 3 weeks in advance of the reading group date for pick-up in the Dudley House Library.
You just need to sign up and if you join our weekly session you can get your free copy. Don't miss the opportunity of reading a great classical author or a contemporary writer with a new aesthetic discursive approach. The Dudley Reading Group will offer a great space for discussion and feedback as you enjoy our books and conversation over wine and cheese.
So don't miss this opportunity and please feel free to bring all your ideas and proposals for readings and criticisms to our monthly meetings.
March Reading Group Book:
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee.
Set in an isolated outpost on the edge of a great Empire, WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate, the novel's fascinating narrator, has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of the frontier settlement, dabbling in antiquarianism, and ignoring constant reports of a threat from the "barbarians" who inhabit the uncharted deserts beyond the village. But when military personnel arrive with captured barbarians, he becomes witness to a cruel and unjust defense of the Empire. Outraged and, with military command controlling his village, powerless to prevent the persecution of the barbarians, he finds himself involved in an affair with one of the victims, a girl crippled, blinded, and orphaned by the torturers. Their relationship, intimate but devoid of true understanding, finally pushes him to a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. Rendered in an austere but richly suggestive prose, Coetzee's novel addresses universal political and philosophical issues of power and justice.
April Reading Group Book:
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez.
“On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit…”
A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society—not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial.
Check out our website at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dudley/fellows/lit/lit.html or contact the Dudley Literary Fellows, Rita Banerjee & Cinthya Torres, at dudley_literary@yahoo.com if you have any questions.
Reading Group Dates & Books:
- Tuesday February 19, 2008 ~ 7:30-10 pm in the Third Floor Lounge
Book: Death and the King's Horsemen by Wole Soyinka
Available to for check-out: Thursday January 17
- Tuesday March 18, 2008 ~ 7:30-10 pm in the Third Floor Lounge
Book: Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Available to for check-out: Tuesday February 26
- Tuesday April 15, 2008 ~ 7:30-10 pm in the Third Floor Lounge
Book: Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Available to for check-out: Tuesday March 25