thisnewday | Entries tagged with lpl

Having finished, in one day, this month's selection from the book club at the Liverpool library, I'm thinking about taking my librarian friend Liz's suggestion that I read Jenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers--called "A hybrid of memoir and biography" by reviewer Linda Simon. Liz had kindly handed me a copy of the review before the book club meeting started, having remembered that some months earlier I'd read the entire McCullers canon as well as a 500-page biography when The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had been our monthly selection.

So this morning, as I was sitting down to do my daily BP readings, I pulled the McCullers bio I'd read from the bottom of a very deep and perilously-piled stack situated atop the ottoman in my upstairs office. (Our friend rosegardenfae lives a life of similar peril, residing in the looming, perhaps leaning shadows of her accumulated ventures into the world of books.) I always feel that I need something to read to bring my BP into a somewhat normal range because, even after just getting up in the AM, my mind is already racing to confront whatever challenges I sense facing me in the day ahead.

And because I'd already polished off The Silent Patient, which is this month's club selection, and hadn't yet acquired the Shapland book, I needed something to fill the void. So Virginia Spencer Carr's bio, The Heart of the Lonely Hunter, was gonna have to do for this morning although I have no intention of re-reading the full 500 pages of it.

With that, my friends, the day is started. No work today on the house in the city because the son-in-law has to work and my daughter has to care for the kids following their week-long exploration of opportunities in the south. In fact, all that I actually have scheduled for today is being my grandson's Lyft driver so that he can visit his dad--and hopefully talk with him about getting his own driver's license, lol.

Hope everyone has a good Sunday...

LPK
Dreamwidth
3.1.2020

Even though I haven't read this month's selection, I've decided to attend this morning's meeting of the book club in Liverpool.

It's been a couple of months since I last attended and, as I explained in a text to my grandson, it's one of the few things I do, these days, to maintain contact with anyone outside of the family.

So, the phone will be off and I'll be some distance away from the goings-on here. In the hope that I'll actually be getting, in some sense, closer to myself.

Hope everyone has a good day...

LPK
Dreamwidth
5.24.2018

Well, I'm just back from my long-awaited, much-anticipated book club meeting on the subject of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and about half the group, including the moderator, hadn't read it and the half that did said that they'd struggled.

One bright spot was a retired English teacher, who had read Dalloway as part of his Master's program at Syracuse University, and he was very supportive and encouraging of those who had struggled, offering tips about how he had navigated the book's narrative complexities while coping with the pressures of his program..

I was able to share some insights as well, based in part on my reading of the Alexandra Harris biography. One of the gals who sat across from me said that one night she'd made up her mind to "just get it done" and had sat for two hours and read straight through to the end of it.

I told her that if I'd sat for two hours reading Virginia Woolf I'd have filled my pockets with rocks and walked into the river afterwards. Which got a laugh from the group.

Anyway, with that part of "The Woolf Project" now over, I'm finding that I can once again breath without extra medication, lol. And, since I've already read the next two club selections, I'm gonna relax and read the rest of my Virginia Woolf "collection" at my leisure.

Well, maybe not the "relax" part, because I'm not sure that's possible with Virginia Woolf...

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.28.2017

I had decided, earlier in the day, that I MUST finish reading the Virginia Woolf biography by this evening. Because, after today, I have only 10 days to read the Virginia Woolf novel, Mrs. Dalloway, which will be the subject of this month's book club meeting at the Liverpool Library.

However, having gotten to Friday, March 28th, 1941, and then a paragraph beyond, I've had to pause. It's, you know, one of those things that you know is coming but there's always some little twist which finds that weakness in your emotional preparation and exploits it.

For me, I think it was this:

Leonard [her husband] dealt with the necessary inquest and arranged
a cremation, which he attended alone. He buried the ashes in the gar-
den at Monk's House, under one of the two elm trees they had named
"Leonard" and "Virginia." [Alexandra Harris, Virginia Woolf, Thames &
Hudson, 2011, p. 157.]

IDK if they had discussed this, in the months during which they endured The Blitz, saw their house in London destroyed, and experienced Virginia slipping into another depression which they both feared she might not survive.

They had in the meantime decided that, should Hitler's forces successfully invade England, they would die together by ingesting a drug supplied by Virginia's younger brother. So that this, as events had actually unfolded, had not been the plan.

And yet, I thought it brave of them both. Leonard, for living out his life and courageously managing her legacy, and Virginia for wanting to spare him what she was certain would be her slow and exhausting decline and death.

The first time I encountered her last letter to him, I simply couldn't finish it. But now, as I read it again, I sense the comfort that I'm very sure she'd hoped that Leonard would find in reading it.

And so, after a pause, I'll be reading on, hopefully having gained an appreciation of the writer's life which will likewise enhance my understanding of her novel and enable me to contribute to the discussion of it in Liverpool at the end of the month...

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.17.2017

Earlier this month, I decided that I'd participate in the Liverpool Public Library's upcoming "Thursday Morning Book Klatch," featuring Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

So, along with Dalloway, I acquired several other of her defining titles and, as I've done with several other writers whom I've undertaken to read in some depth, decided to precede my reading of the novel with a biography.

Now I'm rushing to get through Virginia Woolf, a scholarly but engaging biography by University of Liverpool professor Alexandra Harris.

The thing is, this is totally new ground for me and the book assumes at least a passing acquaintance with the scary Ms. Woolf.

With so much having been written about her already, contemporary critics like Ms. Harris are understandably adverse to rehashing previously-discussed theories, interpretations, and life histories.

And the fault is really mine for not having considered that in selecting this book. But, I was in a hurry, found less of a selection on shelves locally than I might've hoped, and so resorted to B&N.com for my books.

But despite all of that, I have learned some interesting stuff and gained a better-informed appreciation of the life and work of Virginia Stephen Woolf.

Who, even in her younger years, was kinda scary too...

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.15.2017

For the past several days, I've been preparing for the reading group which I've decided to try in the village of Liverpool. It meets at 11 AM on the last Thursday of every month, except June and December, at the public library where, several years ago, I belonged to a writer's group.

Liverpool, as a whole, is a fairly affluent community with a decent school system and an extensive library program. It belongs to the county library system but offers many programs and activities which other towns and villages within the same system do not. It's also the village where I came to teach many years ago when I first graduated from the state university.

When I began settling into my new home, in the western suburb where my daughter and her family live, I first looked for a writer's group somewhere nearby. And what I discovered was that all the ones that I'd known about in the past had, for various reasons, met their demise, the only evidence of their once having existed being the abandoned websites which eerily float like ghost ships on the digital waters of the internet.

I then decided that I'd try searching out a book club, something I'd never done in the past, and found that the largest and most active seemed to be a Meet-Up group which calls itself the Syracuse Book Club. However, after preparing myself for the April meeting by reading Sharon Guskin's The Forgetting Time, I decided that their choice of venue, a bar which was also located, coincidentally, in the village of Liverpool, was not really my, er, cup of tea. Or whatever one's beverage of choice might happen to be.

After searching for something associated with a church or library or bookstore closer to home, I settled on the one at the Liverpool library. They seemed to have a format that made sense for an organized reading activity and met in surroundings that suggested a focus on books rather than the bottom of a beer mug. Not to be overlooked, of course, were the improved chances of a safe drive home.

By the time I made that decision, I had only a week or so to locate and read the upcoming selection, which I did, only to discover, a couple of days later, that I'd taken a wrong turn on the library's extensive website and had actually been reading the selection from May of the previous year. Which was unfortunate because I found myself quite comfortable with the book, Willa Cather's classic My Antonia, but also because, by the time I discovered my mistake, I had only 4 days to read the current selection, Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winner, The Underground Railroad.

However, I did find it to be an easy, if uncomfortable read and so, if I can grab a quick shower after dropping my grandson off at school in the city, I'll be fully prepared for my first meeting with what they call the Thursday Morning Book Klatch.

I do feel compelled to mention that, along with the reading, I've found myself speculating as to who and what a "Thursday Morning Book Klatch" might look like. I guess it's kind of a natural thing, on the eve of a new social as well as intellectual venture. But because I'm sometimes a bit unsparing in my assesment of my fellow man, to a degree which might be off-putting to some who might happen by here, I won't get into that just now.

Besides, if I don't allow time for that shower, my membership in this group may be embarassingly short-lived...

LPK
@Dreamwidth
5.25.2017

I think I've finally gotten the pieces together, and made the final preparations, for my reading at the Liverpool Public Library. As I write this, I think about the amazing work of a stained glass artist friend who cuts and grinds and fits and polishes the pieces of her marvelous creations. And then holds them up to let the light shine through them.

I'm not so delusional as to think that the quality of my work in any way approaches hers, but the process seems a lot the same. And the light shining through, at the end, that's the important part. That's where you read it aloud and try to experience the finished piece the way your audience would.

And where you hope to see those brilliant colors. And sometimes, occasionally, not very often, do...

LPK
LiveJournal
3.3.2012

I think I'm finally closing in on the piece that I'm gonna read if I ever get back to the writers' group at the LPL. You know, so that I can have another 10 minutes of that ego-inflating fame that local wannabe writers so ardently crave.

But hey, I look at it this way. Since I've already done this on two previous occasions, one more will make a total of 30 minutes. Which is exactly double the 15 minute standard for delusional egomania.

So, in a world where more is, well, more... apparently I've got it.

LPK
LiveJournal
2.27.2012 (a)