Black Book Swap - Saturday 3rd March

This upcoming event might be interesting:

"The first ever Black Book Swap event will take place on Saturday 3 March. There will be books to swap, authors to meet: Alex Wheatle; Chibundu Onuzo; Colin Grant; Sonja Lewis & Bim Adewunmi, and also the chance to meet other book lovers and dedicated readers. It’s free! We’re so excited! We can’t wait! Put this date in your diary now. (Saturday 3 March 2012, 1pm - 5.00pm Cottons Caribbean Restaurant, 70 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QP)

Bring a book to swap: whether you loved it and want others to know that joy; or hated it but cannot bring yourself to bin it, bring it along and swap it. You are bound to find an exciting read to replace it. Come along and join in even if you don’t have a book to swap. Any leftover books will be donated to charity.

Black Book Swap is free but as places are limited, so best to reserve a place, email: blackbookswap[at]gmail.com"

Site with more info here

Links for the next meeting - A Gothic Triple Bill

Here are some links for the next meeting, our Gothic treble of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a short story collection.

General themes - You can look at The Gothic using some of Freud's thoughts on 'Das Unheimliche', or 'The Uncanny' - that funny creeping feeling you get when that small part of you is screaming that something just isn't right, and WHY do they always insist on investigating strange noises in haunted houses dressed only in a dressing gown, and by candle-light...???!!!

Freud’s 1919 essay on Das Unheimliche is rather long, but some of the elements of ‘The Uncanny’ are very relevant to what we recognise as ‘The Gothic’ - and you'll see many of these themes occuring in our texts for this thursday. Freud listed 8 characteristics – 8 causes of fear used in literature:

Inanimate objects mistaken for animate – eg dolls, waxworks, severed limbs...

Animate objects behaving as if inanimate or mechanical eg trances, fits, epilepsy etc

Being blinded

The double – twins, doppelgangers

Coincidences or repetitions

Being buried alive

An all-controlling evil genius

Confusions between reality and imagination – waking dreams etc

(Taken from The New Uncanny, (2008). Ed Sarah Eyre and Ra Page)

Enotes on Udolpho

Analysis of Jekyll from Wikipedia

Joanne Harris in the Telegraph on Edgar Allan Poe

10 alternative book covers

Produced to promote a new competition, these covers are excellent. I particularly like this one for A Tale of Two Cities.

Full details of the competition are here. The closing date is 19th April

Links for the next meeting - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Here are some links for the book, found by Kelly:

In case you haven’t had time to read it, book-a-minute

Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality

A really interesting negative review

The little-known dark side of Ender’s Game

And, of course, there is going to be a movie

A scary statistic...

There are now more pound shops than book shops in the UK, according to the Local Data Company:

"In the year to the end of October, there was a 14.2pc increase in pound shops taking the total to 3,005, according to research for The Daily Telegraph undertaken by Local Data Company, which tracks shop numbers in 487 town centres.

This is in contrast to the 2,705 book shops in the same area. Book shops have suffered from a decade of unrelenting competition from supermarkets and the internet. This year Waterstone’s has trimmed the number of stores it operates."

I'd love to see some other stats - surely there can't be more bookmakers than book shops?

All the more reason to support your local book shop!

Links for the next meeting - The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

Wikipedia summarises the plot

Hear Roddy Doyle discuss the book on BBC World Service's World Book Club

Plus - this is what James Brown's Night Train sounds like:

Links for the next meeting - I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak

Some reviews from Good Reads

The Wikipedia page, including plot summary and more

Some questions for book groups:

1. What do you think made Ed pick up the gun and go after the bank robber?

2. What would you do if you suddenly started receiving cryptic messages like Ed did? Would you tell anyone? Would you try to figure them out and do what they said?

3. How does Ed's life change after becoming the Messenger?

4. Who did you think was sending Ed the cards?

5. Why were the messages written on playing cards instead of regular paper? Why the aces and joker?

6. Why didn't Ed go to the police?

7. Do you think Ed would have ever felt inspired to change his life if he had never received the cards? If not, would his life still have been as purposeful?

8. What does Ed do to help Father O'Reilly?

9. Do you think that each of Ed's tasks are equally important, or are some more important than others?

10. What was the point of Ed's second mission for the Ace of Spades?

11. Do you think that the sender was right to put Ed in dangerous situations?

12. What does Ed's mother mean when she says "It takes a lot of love to hate you like this"? Do you think she did the right thing to treat him the way she did?

13. Imagine you were in Ed's position. Which of these would have been the hardest to do? Which would have been your favorite?

14. Who is the Messenger? Why did he do all of this?