Why do you lie to me?
I always thought I told the truth.
Why did you lie to me?
Because the truth lies like nothing else and I love the truth.
Mark Strand, "Elegy for My Father"
For our book club, we read for March the book "Old School" by Tobias Wolff. This book was the chosen book for Whatcom Reads this year. The book is about a Prep School Student who plagiarized another student's work for a literary contest. The book is set in the 1960's. Most of us agreed that we wouldn't have picked out "Old School" on own. There was only 1 who really enjoyed the book. Out of 6 participants only 4 read the entire 197 pages but everyone had read most of it. The book did generate a whole lot of discussion. It was perhaps the most spirited discussion we had yet. We used the discussion questions found here. The above quotation is the dedication to the book that I failed to read until the discussion. If you read the book with this quote in mind, it really changes your perception of the events. Check out Life as a Mom and all the other Mom's Booking It 2010
Were you all disappointed in the book or was the conversation good enough to make the time spent worthwhile?
ReplyDeleteI don't think it was a total waste of time to read. However, it was a challenging read as it referenced many authors such as Frost,Rand, and Hemmingway. Many of us hadn't read that type of quality of literature since H.S. or college. I think our discussion would of been radically different if we were more read on the classics. Interestly, the most well read person in our group loved it. We all love chic lit but this stretched us out of our comfort zone. So yes, the hard read was worth it for the discussion.
ReplyDelete