Email Hilary Caws-Elwitt to join the announcement list. You can also visit the Forbes event calendar for more information on upcoming books. The group meets at 6:30pm on the third Monday of the month at Forbes Library--fourth Monday if there's a holiday on the third (always MLK Day in January, President's Day in February, and Patriot's Day in April).
If Forbes is closed for meetings due to the pandemic, we usually meet via Zoom if the weather is bad, or outside the library if it's nice. Email Hilary Caws-Elwitt for details.
Books are available in the reference room at Forbes while supplies last, or you can place your own holds on books for self-service or curbside checkout. Allow at least a week for the hold to arrive. You can place a hold far ahead and set an activation date.
Books scheduled
-
March 18, 2024: The Warden - Anthony Trollope (1855) ~240pp.
Hybrid meeting - click for Zoom link if you prefer not to meet in person in the Forbes Community Room.
- April 22, 2024 - Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866) 629 pp.
- May 20, 2024 - The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit - Sloan Wilson (1955) 276 pp.
- June 17, 2024 - Fathers and Sons - Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1862) 294 pp.
- July 15, 2024 - The Leopard - Giuseppe Lampedusa (1958) ~300 pp.
- August 19, 2024 - Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis (1922) 401 pp.
- September 16, 2024 - The Quiet American - Graham Greene (1955) 249 pp.
- October 21, 2024 - A Passage to India - E. M. Forster (1924) 362 pp.
- November 18, 2024 - Kristin Lavransdatter v1: The Bridal Wreath - Sigrid Undset (1920), 288 pp.
- December 16, 2024 - White Noise - Don DeLillo (1986) 310 pp.
- January 27, 2025 - The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (1844) 1276 pp.
- February 24, 2025 - The Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazzard (1980) 337 pp.
- March 17, 2025 - A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle (1962) 245 pp.
- April 28, 2025 - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne (1767) 674 pp.
- May 19, 2025 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder (1927) 235 pp.
Previous books
Selected by Tim Halas
- Mar-2012 Benito Cereno - Herman Melville
- Apr-2012 Tropic of Capricorn - Henry Miller
- May-2012 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- Jun-2012 The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
- Jul-2012 The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
- Aug-2012 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
- Sep-2012 The Sound and the Fury - Faulker
- Oct-2012 Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
- Nov-2012 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
- Dec-2012 American Dream - Norman Mailer
Selected by consensus
- Jan-2013 Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Feb-2013 Middlemarch - George Eliot
- Mar-2013 Little Dorritt - Charles Dickens
- Apr-2013 Bread Givers - Anzia Yezierska
- May-2013 The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
- Jun-2013 The Professor's House - Willa Cather
- Jul-2013 The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
- Aug-2013 Giants in the Earth - Ole Rolvaag
- Sep-2013 Everything That Rises Must Converge - Flannery O'Connor
- Oct 21 2013: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- Nov 18 2013: Country of the Pointed Firs - Sarah Orne Jewett
- Dec 16 2013: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
- Jan 27 2014: Villette - Charlotte Bronte
- Feb 24 2014: Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- March 17th, 2014: Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
-
April 28th, 2014: Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
-
May 19th, 2014: Call it Sleep - Henry Roth
-
June 16th, 2014: The Fall - Albert Camus
-
July 21st, 2014: Ulysses - James Joyce
-
August 18th, 2014: Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
-
September 15, 2014: Collected Stories - Eudora Welty
-
October 20, 2014: Peder Victorious - Ole Rolvaag
-
November 17, 2014: The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
-
December 15, 2014: Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
- January 26, 2015: Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
- February 23, 2015: One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- March 16, 2015: Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
- April 27, 2015: The Red and the Black – Stendahl
- May 18, 2015: Orlando - Virginia Woolf
- June 15, 2015: The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
- July 20, 2015: The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
- August 17, 2015: The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
- September 21, 2015: The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
- October 19, 2015: The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
- November 16, 2015: Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
- December 21, 2015: Under Western Eyes – Joseph Conrad
- January 25, 2016: War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- February 22, 2016: As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
- March 21, 2016: The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
- April 25, 2016: Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
- May 16, 2016: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- June 20, 2016: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
- July 18, 2016: Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers
- August 15, 2016: Siddartha - Herman Hesse
- September 19, 2016: The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
- October 17, 2016: Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
- November 21, 2016: Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
- December 19, 2016: The Plumed Serpent - D. H. Lawrence
- January 23, 2017: The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope
- February 27, 2017: Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
- March 20, 2017: I, Claudius - Robert Graves
- April 24, 2017: Beloved - Toni Morrison
- May 15, 2017: The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara
- June 19, 2017: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
- July 17, 2017: Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot) - Honoré de Balzac
- August 21, 2017: Light in August - William Faulkner
- September 18, 2017: Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell translation)
- October 16, 2017: Demian - Herman Hesse
- November 20, 2017: The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
- December 18, 2017: The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
- Jan 22, 2018: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale - Herman Melville (1851)
- Feb 26, 2018: The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan (1989)
- Mar 19, 2018: Candide - Voltaire (1759)
- Apr 23, 2018: The Group - Mary McCarthy (1963)
- May 21, 2018: Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion (1970)
- Jun 18, 2018: Germinal - Zola (1885)
- Jul 16, 2018: The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963)
- Aug 20, 2018: Swann's Way - Marcel Proust (1913)
- Sep 17, 2018: 1984 - George Orwell (1949)
- Oct 15, 2018: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (collection) - Flannery O'Connor (1955)
- Nov 19, 2018: Native Son - Richard Wright (1940)
- Dec 17, 2018: The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922)
- Jan 28, 2019: The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (1982)
- February 25, 2019: All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
- March 18, 2019: Death in Venice - Thomas Mann (1924)
- April 22, 2019: The Aeneid - Virgil (19 BCE) (Robert Fitzgerald translation)
- May 20, 2019: Silence - Shūsaku Endō (1966)
- June 17, 2019: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (1884)
- July 15, 2019: O Pioneers - Willa Cather (1913)
- August 19, 2019: The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)
- September 16, 2019: Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)
- October 21, 2019: Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood (1988)
- November 18, 2019: Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell (1938)
- December 16, 2019: A Death in the Family - James Agee (1957)
- January 27, 2020, 2019: Don Quixote - Cervantes (1615) (Edith Grossman translation)
- Feb. 24, 2020: Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe (1722)
- Mar. 16, 2020: Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson (1980)
- Apr. 27, 2020: Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1877)
- May 18, 2020: Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (1811)
- Jun 15, 2020: The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler (1903)
- Jul 20, 2020: The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy (1886)
- Aug 17, 2020: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia - Samuel Johnson (1759)
- Sep 21, 2020: Two books! Beowulf - Seamus Heaney translation (2000) and Grendel - John Gardner (1971)
- Oct 19, 2020: The Waves - Virginia Woolf (1931)
- Nov 16, 2020: The Trial - Franz Kafka (1925)
- Dec 21, 2020: Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol (1842)
- Jan 18, 2021: The Iliad - Homer (8th century B.C.) - Robert Fagles translation -
Translation comparison
- Feb 15, 2021: Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler (1940)
- Mar 15, 2021: Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1901)
- Apr 19, 2021: Paradise Lost - John Milton (1674)
Read online or download
Nicely-annotated online version
- May 17, 2021: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark (1961)
- Jun 21, 2021: The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevksy (1880) - Translation comparison
- Jul 19, 2021: The Periodic Table - Primo Levi (1975)
- Aug 16, 2021: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston (1976)
- Sep 20, 2021: The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (1400), specifically:
- General Prologue
- The Knight's Tale
- The Miller's Tale
- The Reeve's Tale
- The Wife of Bath's Tale
- The Friar's Tale
- The Summoner's Tale
- The Merchant's Tale
- The Tale of Sir Thopas
- The Nun's Priest Tale
- Oct 18, 2021: This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
- Nov 15, 2021: Walden - Henry David Thoreau (1854)
- Dec 20, 2021: Inferno - Dante Alighieri (14th c.)
Translation comparison
- Jan 17, 2022: The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (1962) 640 pp.
- Feb 21, 2022: East of Eden - John Steinbeck (1952) 601 pp.
- Mar 21, 2022: Faust (part 1 only) - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808) ~175 pp.
Some public domain translations: 1 2 3 4
- Apr 25, 2022: The Metamorphoses - Ovid (8 A.D.) ~500 pp.
- May 16, 2022: Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata (1956) 175 pp.
- Jun 27, 2022: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (1862) 1,260 pp.
Translations compared (scroll past all the purchasing links to see the content)
A great companion podcast if you want to dive deep!
- July 18, 2022: A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (1859) ~400 pp.
- Aug 15, 2022: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values - Robert Pirsig (1974) 430 pp.
- Sep 19, 2022: Daniel Deronda - George Eliot (1876) 896 pp.
- Oct 17, 2022: The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy (1878) 497 pp.
- Nov 21, 2022: The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (1924) 729 pp.
- Dec 19, 2022: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll (1865) ~300 pp.
- Jan 23, 2023: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (1847) 624 pp.
- February 27, 2023: The Golden Bowl - Henry James (1904) 612 pp.
-
March 20, 2023: King Lear - William Shakespeare (1608) ~150pp.
- April 24, 2023: The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress - Mark Twain (1869) ~450pp.
-
May 15, 2023: The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches - W. E. B. DuBois (1903) ~250pp.
-
June 26, 2023: The Song of the Lark - Willa Cather (1915) 580pp
-
July 17, 2023: Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress - Charles Dickens (1838) ~400pp.
-
August 28, 2023: Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman (1855ff) ~300-700pp.
We focused on:
- One's-Self I Sing
- I Hear America Singing
- Song of Myself (52 sections)
- I Sing the Body Electric (9 sections)
- I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
- Salut au Monde! (13 sections)
- Song of the Open Road (15 sections)
- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (9 sections)
- Pioneers! O Pioneers!
- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
- When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (15 sections)
- O Captain! My Captain!
- There Was a Child Went Forth
- Of Him I Love Day and Night
- A Noiseless Patient Spider
-
September 18, 2023: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold - C. S. Lewis (1956) 313pp.
-
October 16, 2023: Black Boy - Richard Wright (1945) 425pp.
-
November 20, 2023: The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis (1955) 506pp.
-
December 18, 2023: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers (1940) 359pp.
-
January 29, 2024: The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkien (1954) 432 pp.
- February 26, 2024: The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton (1913) ~450pp.
|