Bloggin' Book Club

The other day, I had a chance to go check out the Santa Maria library for the first time. It's a beautiful, well set up, well stocked library, and I definitely spent more hours than I had planned just looking through their shelves and shelves of tomes. Throughout the library, they had stacks of little booklets titled "Recommended Reading List." I picked one up, and found a new life goal: I want to read every book on that list (Except, perhaps, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"...) The booklet is a comprehensive list of all the world classics. It has everything from children's classics such as "Where the Red Fern Grows," to very heavy lifting such as  "The Brothers Karamazov."

I want the challenge and the joy of reading through the best literature our world has to offer, and I'm inviting anyone who is interested to join me. I am adding a tab at the top of the page for the blog book club. For each book, I will post a read-by date. Starting at the read by date, I will post my thoughts, impressions, and questions about the selection that was just read. Anyone who has done the reading is welcome to do the same. Maybe we can start a cool little community of quiet classics readers. And maybe, just maybe, we'll learn some interesting things along the way.

The first book on the list is called "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe. It is light, easy reading, but an intriguing story. The back doesn't give anything away, so here is a brief description:

"A simple story of a "strong man" whose life is dominated by fear and anger, Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all time and places."

Sounds pretty good huh? :-)

If you're interested in joining me in my classics quest, take a look at the new page at the top of this blog. Hope to see you there!