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When: Saturday May 7th, 2016. 10:30AM to 3PM-ish
Where: Dempsey's
What to expect: fun friends gathered together for talk,
food, and a movie.
Movie: War And Peace — well, part of the movie since most adaptations of this book are still really long.
Send your RSVP
to: Bill at wmoore@biblicalstudies.org
requesting to be updated as more details are available.
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Past
Book Parties:
- 2015
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- 2014
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2013
- The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
- 2012
- "WE" by Yevgeny Zamyatin
- 2011
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- 2010
- Selected Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
- 2009
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
- 2008
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolsoy
- 2007
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- 2006
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2005
- Favorite Father Brown Short Stories by G. K. Chesterton
- 2004
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- 2003
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 2002
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 2000
- The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
- 1996
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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| Diary of a book party |
4/25/2016
Less than two weeks to go. I'm only 60% complete. Lynne and many others are ahead of me, and long finished. I've never read so much, so furiously, in my life.
Besides all that, I am enjoying the book. The pacing is excellent. I think Tolstoy would have been a screen writer or movie producer if he had lived in a different era.
This is the time for everyone to commit.
Please confirm if you will be there on May 7th. I need to communicate with Dempsey's (the restaurant) that there will be seating for all, etc.
Excerpt of the Week (not every week):
Lynne identified this thoughtful quote.
BOOK ELEVEN: 1812; CHAPTER XXV
The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new one. Ever since the world has existed and men have killed one another, a man has never committed such a crime against his fellow without consoling himself with the same idea. That idea is il bien publique, the supposed public good of others.
* This quote is taken partly from the Constance Garnett translation and partly from the Louise & Aylmer Maude translation.
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3/20/2016
Is anyone actually reading this?
Jay Leonhart has finished the book. Roger Marconi is over 60% complete. I hear that M. Rose has just about finished or completely finished it. I'm back at 12% and Lynne Moore is passing me up. I got delayed in my reading by another book party on a book about Winston Churchill called The Churchill Factor, that's a pretty good excuse.... but it was not "my" book party, making it a poor excuse. I hope you like the excerpt...
About those character lists:
I think the one character list I pulled from that Harvard website is too long, 300+ characters is unweildy. Jay Leonhart says you should use a shorter character list, since there are only a few central characters --- those are the ones we need to keep straight. I had previously attached links to alternative character lists at the top of the long list. One of those is Spark Notes which has a list of 27 significant characters.
Excerpt of the Week (not every week):
BOOK TWO: 1805; CHAPTER VIII *
The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.
"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.
* From the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation of War & Peace EBook #2600 at www.gutenberg.org
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1/18/2016
Location: Dempsey's
Reading aid: Character List -- “You can't tell the players without a program.”
Excerpt of the Week (not every week):
"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is not right."
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars," he said.
"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."
"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.
"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!"
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1/9/2016This week, we've confirmed the date. The date is one month later in the year ( to give you all more time to read the book, as it is much longer than April 2015's Gilead).
Why War and Peace? Without even reading it, it satisfies a couple of my several goals for these book parties, namely: catching up on "books I should've read in school" and b) emphasizing Russian Novels.
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