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Discussion Books, Resources and Activities for 2004
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LAVA discussed the following books during 2004. Click book names for reading resources, or browse month by month. Resources for books read in other years are also available.
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| January |
My Architect, a film at the Little Theater about Louis Kahn, the architect of the First Unitarian church building.
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| February |
A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay, 364 pages, 2001. Led by Bill F.
Two sisters in Saskatchewan are lifelong rivals for the same man. Though the youngest is only eight when he first appears, she is consumed by a love that "turns her both monstrous in her scheming and nearly saintly in her devotion," according to Booklist, who says this novel is, "painterly in its lyricism, profoundly female in its voluptuousness, and acute in its psychology." Washington Post: "Hay exposes the beauty simmering in the heart of harsh settings with an evocative grace that brings to mind Annie Proulx." Kirkus Reviews: "In stunningly precise and suggestive prose, Hay tells a story of obsession and rivalry....Hay's yearning, suffering women have the lit-from-within emotional intensity of D.H. Lawrence's."
Resources for Reading and Discussion
The author's web site
A reader's guide
Review in The New York Times
Wikipedia page for Elizabeth Hay
Biographical details for the author
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| March |
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, 320 pages, 2002. Led by Bill F.
An eleven-year boy in the Midwest who has good reason to believe in miracles embarks on a search for his outlaw brother. It is at once a quest, a tragedy and a love story. This book was the "If All of Rochester Read the Same Book..." selection for 2004.
Resources for Reading and Discussion
Writers & Books always provides a good
interview with the author and a great discussion guide.
The publisher also provides an interview with Enger and they too provide a discussion guide.
This New York Times reviewer wasn't entirely happy with this book.
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| April |
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, 200 pages, 1999. Led by Joyce H.
The winner of the 1999 Booker Prize, this novel explores the tensions between generations, sexes and races in modern South Africa. Christian Science Monitor: "This is a novel of almost frightening perception from a writer of brutally clear prose."
Resources for Reading and Discussion
A collection of resouces for Coetzee assembled by the New York Times
A web page with links to many reviews
of Coetzee's Disgrace
A review in the London Review of Books
A review in the New York Times
Another review in the New York Times
Coetzee's Nobel Prize lecture and other resources
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| May |
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, 274 pages, 2001. Led by Pam J.
When a young girl gains attention by winning spelling bees, her emotionally fragile family begins to fall apart. Booklist: "There is so much pain in this powerful first novel about a family's unraveling that it often seems on the edge of unbearable. . . . we endure the pain out of respect for one girl's courage and all-consuming love."
Resources for Reading and Discussion
A review in Salon
An interview with the author
A link to an audio recording of a panel discussion about the book that was presented on the Dianne Rehm show on public radio (this audio gives away much of the ending, so you might want to wait until you finish the book before you listen to it).
An audio recording of the author reading from the book
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| June |
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 209 pages, 1958. Led by Nancy W.
The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature says: "The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s." It has sold
8 million copies in 50 languages.
Resources for Reading and Discussion
A helpful interview with the author in the Atlantic Monthly
A chapter-by-chapter discussion of Things Fall Apart
The Wikipedia entry for Achebe
An extensive web site about Achebe
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| October |
Personal History by Katharine Graham, 625 pages, 1997. Led by Rachel S.
The Pulitzer-Prize winning autobiography of the woman who inherited the Washington Post just before the Watergate era. Overcoming a privileged but troubled childhood, an extraordinarily difficult marriage (her mentally ill husband committed suicide) and a thoroughly sexist work atmosphere, she began to assert herself in midlife, playing a significant role in the exposure and downfall of Richard Nixon.
Resources for Reading and Discussion
"Katharine Graham Remembered" by
the staff of the Washington Post. It includes a wonderful audio slide show.
A PBS interview with Graham
An unfriendly review in The Progressive
Graham's talk at the Commonwealth Club in 1972
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| November |
The Plague by Nobel Prize-winner Albert Camus, 308 pages. Led by Joyce L.
An outbreak of the plague in Algeria and the way people deal with it becomes a metaphor for the spread of Nazism in Europe. This thought-provoking novel is one of the classics of 20th century literature.
Resources for Reading and Discussion
The Camus Society
Wikipedia entry for Camus
Camus' Nobel Prize speech and other resources
A recent review in The Guardian
"Camus's La Peste: sanitation, rats, and
messy ethics" by Colin Davis in Modern Language Review.
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| December |
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusas, 320 pages, 1960. Led by Andrea D.
Set in the 1860s, this classic novel, which is "both an indictment and a lament," traces the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy. The New Yorker called it "A majestic, melancholy and beautiful novel."
A couple of weeks after the book discussion, LAVA shared a pot luck dinner at Joyce and Richard's house and viewed Vistonti's film adaptation of The Leopard on DVD.
Resources for Reading and Discussion
The prince in the book rules over the House of Salina, which controls several estates. One of them is the
island of Salina itself, which is one of the Aeolian Islands off the northern coast of Sicily.
Tancredi and Angelica explored Donnafugata Castle on another of the prince's estates.
The prince's villa, where much of the action occurs, is near Palermo and is partly based on the Villa Lampedusa the ancestral home of the author.
An excellent essay on the 50th anniversary
of The Leopard in the International Herald Tribune
About the author
The author and the book
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