Reader’s Den

This week, we will be discussing Chapters 5-8 of The Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton as part of the New York Public Library's Reader's Den.

If you don't have a copy of the book yet, please visit the first post for links to request a library copy or download the FREE ebook.

Welcome to the New York Public Library's Reader's Den, a monthly online book discussion. For July, we will be reading G.K. Chesterton's 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare as part of Mystery Summer.

Get a free copy of the book from any of the following sources.

For new and existing fans of Stephen King, here are some things to check out next:

Every once in a while, science fiction really resonates with the human experience. One of these moments for me, was in the TV series The 4400 when a woman walks into a polluted river and uses her powers to make it crystal clear and clean. Time travel fiction does this well, and 11/22/63 was full of these moments for me. Jake has several of these moments every time he goes through the Rabbit Hole, and this blogger summed many of them up quite well (spoiler alert). King uses phrases like "the heart wants what the heart wants" and "the past harmonizes with itself" partly to move the time travel plot along, but also, I believe, to illustrate the 

The '60s have been a wellspring of creative inspiration lately, from Mad Men to X-Men: First Class to Motown-inspired singing sensations such as Adele, Duffy and Amy Winehouse. In the article "1962" in Intelligent Life from the magazine the Economist, author Matthew Engel discusses other recent works of fiction that are firmly grounded in the '60s, including The Help and On Chesil Beach.

Welcome to the June 2012 edition of the Reader's Den! The title for this month is Stephen King's 11/22/63, part of Mystery Summer. If you were expecting The Sixes by Kate White, please see my earlier post and check out her new book So Pretty It Hurts.

Welcome back to the Reader's Den — this is our final week discussing David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Last week we covered part two of the novel, which focused on the midwife, Orito's abduction to the Mount Shiranui Shrine. This week we will finish up with the last three sections of the book, which include chapters twenty-seven through forty-one, in which Mitchell once again presents new narrators. The first is the slave called Weh, who narrates a short chapter exposing many of the hardships of his daily life. It is from his perspective that we learn Jacob has been working to translate the Japanese scroll containing the edicts of the shrine.

Welcome to week three of May in the Reader's Den! This week, we continue our discussion of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, focusing on Part II — chapters fourteen through twenty-six.

Welcome back to the Reader's Den! This week, we will be talking about part one - the first thirteen chapters - of David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. With the exception of the opening chapter, the entirety of part one is told from the perspective of Jacob de Zoet during the first months of his residence on the island of Dejima, off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan.

Welcome to May in the Reader's Den! this month, we are discussing The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, the fifth novel from British author David Mitchell.

Primarlly I chose You Know Nothing of My Work! to highlight in the Reader's Den because I am a huge fan of its author, Douglas Coupland. He is famous for being associated with the phrase Generation X*, now a term nearly as well known as Marshall McLuhan's "global village." Coupland is the author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, among numerous other works of fiction and non-fiction.

It is worth noting that both Marshall McLuhan and his biographer Douglas Coupland, each keen observers of modern communication technologies, are both from Canada. It is also a place called home to Harold Adams Innis, a contemporary of McLuhan's, who was another early pioneer of media studies. Coupland says of Innis and McLuhan "This ability to contemplate wide distances with no overriding imperialist agenda gave both men a sense of intellectual freedom."

A meme, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is defined as "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." Memes these days spread like wildfire. Everything from celebrity gossip to socio-political movements jump from one mind to the next seemingly faster than the speed of light with the ease of electronic communications. This was Marshall McLuhan's modern vision, though his thought processes were extrapolated from historical roots.

In case you know nothing of his work, we shall open April's book discussion of Douglas Coupland's biography of Herbert Marshall McLuhan with a video clip of the famous scene from Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Coupland, author of Generation X, employs literary techniques that mimic the digital world in the unfolding of McLuhan's story. Footnotes lead to Wikipedia entries, and dialogue is pulled directly from online discussion groups. McLuhan's bibliography appears throughout the book in the form of Abebooks rare book sales, and a test for symptoms of autism (McLuhan is suspected of being on the spectrum) are included in the text as an example of the impact of the 

“The music ceased, the whine of the needle on the empty centre of the record so faint it was hardly anything. Still dwelling in his exile, Florian finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the grass. The sun was slipping away, the evening light becoming dusky. Jessie clambered to her feet when he did, went back with him to the drawing-room, where he lifted the needle off. In the kitchen he put sausages on to fry.” (Love and Summer, p. 61)

Welcome back to the Reader's Den. This week, I would like to post a few questions for you to consider while reading Love and Summer and developing relationships with its characters.

Do you enjoy Film Noir, Swedish mysteries, Agatha Christie, espionage thrillers, potboilers, or Sherlock Holmes? 

Mystery Summer promises to fill your summer months with Film Noir screenings, mystery book discussions, and more, all at the Mid-Manhattan Library!

"Closing the gate again when she left the crab-apple orchard, she slipped the loop of chain over the gatepost. He had a way of hesitating before he spoke, of looking away for a moment and then looking back. He had a way of holding a cigarette. When he'd offered her one he'd tapped one out of the packet for himself and hadn't lit it. The rest of the time he was with her he'd held it, unlit, between his fingers." — Love and Summer, page 54

"On the streets of darkened towns, on roads that are often his alone, bright sudden moments pierce the dark: reality at second hand spreads in an emptiness." — Page 211