Book Discussion Sept 3rd 6pm Houston Montrose Library downstairs - UBIK by Philip Dick

[A Aman]

Hi everyone --

  Next week on Thursday, we will meet at Freed-Montrose Library at 6pm in the downstairs conference room.  We will discuss UBIK by Philip K. Dick.  Brian will lead the discussion.

  Also, for anyone who might have missed the announcement last time, please see below the addition to our schedule of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neal Hurston for our October discussion.

  --Alice

  http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/Montrose
  http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/blog/
  http://groups.google.com/group/MontroseGreatBooks
  http://www.houstongreatbooks.net/groups/Montrose.html
  http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/GreatBooksGuide.htm

==========Upcoming Discussions===========================

September 3, 2009 UBIK by Philip K. Dick (publ 1969) 224 pages
Named by Time magazine as one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923.
A combination of Science Fiction comedy with the unease of reality gone wrong...the protagonist is hired by a company which blocks telepathic snooping and paranormal dirty tricks. Something goes terribly wrong when a big job is tackled on the moon.
--Brian will lead discussion

October 1, 2009 THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neal Hurston (194 pages) publ 1937
Title selected by Houston Public Library as part of the BOOKS ON THE BAYOU citywide reading initiative.
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Zora Neale Hurston was the most prolific and accomplished black woman writer in America. The book was not universally praised by Hurston's peers, with particular criticism leveled at her use of black southern dialect to show that complex relationships and metaphoric language are possible in something considered "substandard" to English. Setting of novel is central and southern Florida in the early 20th century.
The main character, an African American woman in her early forties, tells via an extended flashback, the story of her life which has three major periods corresponding to her marriages to three very different men.

November 5, 2009 HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens (publ 1854) 313 pages
Novel highlights the social and economic pressures that some were experiencing at the time. Dickens wished to satirize radical Utilitarians whom he described ... as "see[ing] figures and averages, and nothing else." He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions.  Setting is the fictitious Victorian industrialist town named Coketown
--Marcella will lead discussion
Note: group will elect a play from list of available performances provided by Alice to be discussed in March (play must be available in text form)

December 3, 2009 THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath (publ 1963) 288 pages
Book is semi-autobiographical with the protagonist's descent into mental illness paralleling the author's own experiences chronicled with stunning wit and devastating honesty. Story begins with the protagonist as a young girl from the suburbs of Boston gaining a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City.
--Wendy will lead discussion
Note: At end of discussion, group will vote on new titles for upcoming reading list..

January 7, 2010 IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER by Italo Calvino (publ 1979) 304 pages
Author was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death, and a noted contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. List of awards of author can be viewed on wikipedia.org
This book is about a reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. According to this book, the entire novel, even its plot, is an open trajectory where even the author himself questions his motives of the writing process.
--Jo will lead discussion

February 4, 2010 THE PRINCE by Niccolo Machiavelli (publ 1532) 134 pages
Sometimes shockingly direct how-to manual for rulers who aim either to establish and retain control of a new state or to seize and control an existing one. Makes a clear break from the Western tradition of political philosophy that preceded the author where the thinkers of this tradition were concerned with issues of justice and human happiness, and with the constitution of the ideal state.
--Alice will lead discussion