Book Club discusses The Sparrow, February 18, 2006
The Cousins Book Club met at the same place and time yesterday to share a meal and talk about the most recent book,
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. Della opened the discussion with a comment from Carol, who unfortunately couldn't make it and was sorely missed. Carol's comment related to the role that religion played in the book. Much discussion was generated, specifically around the issue of
theodicy in the book specifically, and in the world we live in. The next book club read will be "
The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd and was chosen by Angie. As you can see from the slidshow, Lenny, Benny Marijke and I went to visit Grandma and Jennifer's daughters afterward.
Click on thumbnail photo to watch discussion of Wicked
Saint Benedict's influence on the Internet
In 1995, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert produced a website, www.christdesert.org, that by 1996 had attained a market reach of 12% of online users — a reach that ranked it among the top five online destinations in the world, and thus among Yahoo, Netscape and the other most trafficed sites of the early years of the Internet.
NextSribe is an internet pioneer. Its genesis was in 1994 at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, and its mission was clarified through the composition of a strategic technology plan (in 1996-1997) for the Vatican.
NextScribe's mission is to exploit the potential of digital networks to give new life to classical spiritual practices, so that people will be sanctified in their communities and relationships.
Texas Book Clubber In town to discuss the latest book
Book Club convenes with new member and family visitors 
Adele was in from Texas and the book club met to discuss her book rec - The Little Rule and the Little Way. Our conversation drifted to many interesting topics related to the intriguing Saint Therese, and my mind wandered back to the diversity of monasteries that I have visited around the world. The club also welcomed its newest member, Jackie who selected the club's next read - Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Chang.
Heated Breakfast over Great Fire
"Great Fire" discussion at the Tec...20 May 2005
Well, Jen remembered to come this time, and we had a great discussion of the latest read, "The Great Fire" by Shirley Hazzard. If you haven't found the time to read the book yet, it will be well worth the effort. This is one of those books that if you were deserted on an island and could only have one book with you, this would be it.
The Great Fire Questions for Discussion and Synopsis
I found PICADOR, the site Carol had recommended for guiding reading group discussion some month's back. Since I can't post links in the title block, I copied and pasted those items below for your information. You can also click on the word Picador in this post to be taken to that site. Don't feel boxed in by either the synposis or Picador's questions. They are only places to get started with a discussion. I have about 2 hours more to read of the book, which is my second time reading it in 2 years.
The Great Fire: Ten Questions for Discussion
- If The Great Fire is a historical novel—“historical” in setting as well as in its preoccupation with weight of political and personal history—how does the novel feel particularly contemporary? What themes present in the book exist today, in our world?
- The novel is, as well, a veiled critique on Imperialism, on the Western world’s presence in
foreign lands. In what way does each character reflect a different reaction to the East? What sorts of roles do they (Aldred, Peter, Oliver, the Driscolls, Calder, Talbot) play in its changing politics? - In what ways is love expressed in the novel? Do these characters put themselves at risk for such expression, and furthermore, what must they stand up against to love others?
- The idea of destiny–fate–comes up again and again in this world. The word “destiny” itself is mentioned more than four times throughout the novel. If both love and war are then meant to be, if these people’s damages lead them to new places, what do these characters’ individual lives say about humanity as a whole? Does the novel leave you with hope or worry?
- More specifically, what is the fate of women in The Great Fire? Think of the discussion on Western weddings in Hong Kong, on page 159. Of Aldred and Peter’s impressions and experiences with women. Of Helen’s plight.
- Discuss the paragraph on page 111, beginning with “These were their days…”
- What role do the mailed letters play in the book? Are they “the sad silly evidence of things,” as Aldred says to Helen, or are they more? How does Hazzard use the epistolary form to fuel the narrative?
- Why, towards the novel’s close, does Aldred remember the stacking of his home’s firewood (page 223) with such immaculate detail?
- Infirmity is everywhere throughout The Great Fire—from Benedict Driscoll’s degeneration to Aldred’s wounds to Peter’s fate to Dick Laister’s father’s amputation. What deeper, quieter infirmities exist in the book? What are your impressions about the characters’ reaction to their wounds?
- What do you believe Benedict said when he yelled at the Japanese servant who would subsequently kill himself?
Synopsis of the Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
The year is 1947. The great fire of the Second World War has convulsed Europe and Asia. In its wake, Aldred Leith, an acclaimed hero of the conflict, has spent two years in China at work on an account of world-transforming change there. Son of a famed and sexually ruthless novelist, Leith begins to resist his own self-sufficiency, nurtured by war. Peter Exley, another veteran and an art historian by training, is prosecuting war crimes committed by the Japanese. Both men have narrowly escaped death in battle, and Leith saved Exley’s life. The men have maintained a long-distance friendship in a postwar loneliness that haunts them both, and which has swallowed Exley whole. Now in their thirties, with their youth behind them and their world in ruins, both must invent the future and retrieve a private humanity.
Arriving in Occupied Japan to record the effects of the bomb at Hiroshima, Leith meets Benedict and Helen Driscoll, the Australian son and daughter of a tyrannical medical administrator. Benedict, at twenty, is doomed by a rare degenerative disease. Helen, still younger, is inseparable from her brother. Precocious, brilliant, sensitive, and at home in the books they read together, these two have been, in Leith’s words, delivered by literature. The young people capture Leith’s sympathy; indeed, he finds himself struggling with his attraction to this girl whose feelings are as intense as his own and from whom he will soon be fatefully parted.
