Book Groups |
April 2012
ELLIOTT BAY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, April 3rd at 6:30 p.m.
(First Tuesday of each month)
Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. Regeneration by Pat Barker is our April selection. In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified as "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back to the trenches. Regeneration is the first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed World War I trilogy. The New Yorker said of the book, "It has been Pat Barker's accomplishment to enlarge the scope of the contemporary English novel...Regeneration is an inspiring book that balances conscience and the vitality of change against a collapsing world."
GLOBAL ISSUES & ETHICS BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, April 10th at 6:30 p.m.
(second Tuesday of each month)
Our Global Issues & Ethics Book Group is devoted to discussing books that cover the most relevant topics of our everyday lives. Our April selection is Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View by Stephen Breyer. Charged with the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court has the awesome power to strike down laws enacted by our elected representatives. Why does the public accept the Court's decisions as legitimate and follow them, even when those decisions are highly unpopular? What must the Court do to maintain the public's faith? How can it help make our democracy work? In this groundbreaking book, Justice Stephen Breyer tackles these questions and more, offering an original approach to interpreting the Constitution that judges, lawyers, and scholars will look to for many years to come. The New Republic described the book in the following way, "Vivid and full of surprising details...Exemplifies an idealism about what is possible in a democratic citizenry, and an optimism about it, that is as impressive as it is rare on the Supreme Court...Very Admirable."
SPECULATIONS-SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, April 17th at 6:30 p.m.
(third Tuesday of each month)
As the literature of ideas and imagination, Science Fiction and Fantasy simply demands discussion. Our selection for April is Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rules their world as the gods of the Hindu pantheon. Only one dares oppose them: he who was once Siddhartha and is now Mahasamatman. Binder of Demons. Lord of Light.
STAGES - ELLIOTT BAY DRAMA BOOK CLUB
Tuesday, April 24th at 6:30 p.m.
(fourth Tuesday of each month)
Elliott Bay's Drama Book Group, Stages, meets once a month to read, enjoy and discuss great plays and dramatic works, contemporary and classic, from the U.S. and around the world. Our April play selection is the recent winner of the 2010 Yale Drama comptetion, blu by Viriginia Grise. In this thought-provoking new play where memory, history, and culture collide with rooftop dreams as Soledad and her partner, Hailstorm, redefine family on their own terms after the death of their eldest son in Iraq. Set in the barrio and steeped in poetic realism and contemporary politics, blu challenges us to try to imagine a time before war. Please join us for a thoughtful discussion.
