Welcome
As booksellers, we often overhear customers lamenting that they've always meant to read “that other Jane Austen novel,” or Graham Greene, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but just never found the time. We've tried to remedy that with our Classics I Forgot to Read Book Club by providing motivation and a welcoming space to share your thoughts.
In choosing our ‘classics’ over the past few years, we've tried to select titles that had some visibility among readers, but were not necessarily included in the standard high school English class. We've also sampled a range of genres, from mystery (The Long Goodbye) to comedy (Cold Comfort Farm) to stream-of-consciousness (To the Lighthouse). So, whether our picks are already gathering dust on your bookshelves or this is your first encounter with the literary canon, we encourage you to join us on the last Wednesday evening of every month for conversation about the classics.
March 2010--Maus
by Art Spiegelman
This is arguably the book that put graphic novels on the literary map and showed that they could handle serious topics (does it get much more serious than the Holocaust?) in a powerful, creative way. Spiegelman recounts his father's experiences in the years leading up to his imprisonment in Auschwitz--the gradual tightening of the Nazi grip on the Jewish community. (A second volume deals with his father's stay in the concentration camp itself). By framing the Holocaust story within the story of the postwar father-son relationship, he shows us the lifelong effects of the ordeal and explores the nature and cost of survival.
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