Affiliated with a Non-Profit Educational Organization
Houston Montrose Great Books - Ballot for Oct 4, 2007 (most descriptions below of titles are excerpted from wikipedia)
Plan is to vote on and select 6 titles out of those submitted. Each attendee will have six votes.
Suggested by Betty
THE ANALECTS by Confucius (102 pages) written 479-221 B.C.
Since Confucius' time, the Analects has heavily influenced the philosophy and moral values of China and later other East Asian countries as well. Together with the other three volumes of the Four Books, it taught the basic Confucian values including propriety, righteousness, loyalty and filial piety, all centered about the central thought of Confucius – humanity. Recommended text (if elected) will be the Penguin Classics paperback version but there are numerous other versions available including several downloadable from the web if that is your choice..
Suggested by Alice
OTHELLO by Shakespeare (approx 100 pages) written around 1603
A tragic play about deception, manipulation, and revenge- The devotion seems ideal between Othello and Desdemona until they become victims of Iago's exploitation. Play will be performed live this Spring at the Alley Theatre here in Houston.
Text available for downloading online from:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/0ws3210.txt
EVERYMAN by PHilip Roth (192 pages) publ 2006
PEN/Faulkner award - 2007 .
Sketch of an ordinary man's life in reverse.starting with the funeral. -- speaks eloquently about life's unfulfillments, about making
adjustments if the unfolding of one's life doesn't follow the original plan. Some reviewers have declared it a "masterpiece".
Suggested by Chris
MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett (217 pages) publ 1930
A crime noir classic. A greedy and ruthless trio of characters bent on finding the statuette meet their match in Sam Spade. The plot, characters, and dialogue in The Maltese Falcon are perfectly controlled by Hammett, incorporating a vigor and style that became the paradigm for hard-boiled crime fiction. Possible discussion questions at www.readinggroupsguides.com
DON QUIXOTE - BOOK I by Miguel De Cervantes (459 pages) publ 1604 Please read the new translation by Edith Grossman
From Library Journal - "In 2002, 100 major writers from 54 countries rated Don Quixote the world's best work of fiction. Any new translation of Cervantes's immortal classic is thus a major publishing event, and when that translator is Grossman-the prize-winning interpreter of several contemporary Latin American literary giants, it is a major event indeed."
Chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.
WAR PRAYER (2 pages) publ 1905 http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.htmlNO. 44, MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (200 pages) publ 1982, not 1916 - Please read version publ by Univ of California Press 1982.
(other versions such as one published posthumously in 1916 reputedly not written by Twain)
Story of a devil wreaking subversive havoc on a socially repressive culture by playing on their hypocritical terms. One example of where it can be purchased is on amazon.com
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy (256 pages) publ 2006
Pulitzer Prize winner and chosen as an Oprah book club selection
A post-apocalyptic tale describing a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted years before by an unnamed cataclysm which destroyed civilization and most life on earth. Possible discussion questions at http://bestsellers.about.com/od/bookclubquestions/a/the_road_q.htm
Suggested by Wendy
THE STRANGER by Albert Camus (123 pages) publ 1946
Author was 1957 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature
There are at least three well known translations of The Stranger. Pick carefully. We may have a recommendation if this title gets selected. (Stay tuned..).
Book is one of the best-known examples of absurdist fiction. Some classify it as Existential. The setting is Algiers. The stranger of the story is a young man who commits an unpremeditated crime in a moment of aberration and then is slowly and methodically condemned to death. One of the translations is available HERE.
THE HOMECOMING by Harold Pinter (96 pages) publ 1964
Author was 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature
The cruel underbelly of society in the 60s surfaces almost surely with sexually explicit themes and themes of violence. The play is concerned with the return of Teddy, a professor of philosophy at an American college, to the North London house occupied by his father, uncle, and brothers, all of whom seem to operate on the fringes of working-class society, some distance from respectability. Teddy is accompanied by his wife, Ruth, who then finds herself at the centre of a series of Pinteresque power-struggles
Suggested by Claire
WAITING by Ha Jin (308 pages) publ 1999
National Book Award Winner. Also PEN/Faulkner Award winner.
Story gives us a glimpse at the personal lives of couples in Communist China 30 years ago. It is about a man struggling with the conflicting claims of two women, one who is a young nurse in the city where he is stationed as an army doctor and the other who is his wife and an illiterate peasant with bound feet whom he was married to by arrangement.
Possible discussion questions at: www.readinggroupguides.com.
