At Jackie's December 2015

At Doreen's October 2015

Bring up The Bodies - discussion questions

1. The novel starts off with a description of hawks soaring in the sky and swooping in to slaughter their prey. In the same manner, the novel closes off with an image of a fox attacking a hen coop. What is the significance of these animals and what do they symbolize?
2. How is King Henry VIII described in the novel? Is he self-serving, or does he truly believe in the validity of his actions? Does he come over as a sympathetic character?
3. King Henry had fawned over all three women (Katherine, Anne, Jane) at one point in time. His past actions indicate that he loved his former wives, yet each affair proves temporary. How does Henry view love? Why do the women in the novel endeavor to wear the “poisoned ring?”
4. There is enormous power in a woman’s gaze. How do the women in this novel utilize their feminine wiles to their advantage? What effect do they have on men subject to their lure, and what does this tell you about women’s power over their male counterparts?
5. Birth and is a major conceit throughout the novel. As “nails give birth to nails,” are children the product of their parents? Consider the parent-child relationships in the novel. What influence do parents have on their progeny?
6. Anne Boleyn is accused of committing adultery and even incest. Could there be any truth in these accusations, or are they complete fabrications by her enemies? How does she change once she realizes she is in danger?’
7. Cromwell seems very protective of Wyatt and saves him from death, even though he is widely suspected of being one of Anne’s lovers. Why does Cromwell feel such a strong need to defend him when he vehemently accuses others of being the Queen’s bedfellows? What sets Wyatt apart from the other men portrayed in the novel? What have Wyatt and Cromwell in common?’
8. The story concludes with Cromwell’s claim that there are no endings, only beginnings. The country now has a new queen and a new leading family. What does this mean for England’s future? What do you think Cromwell’s role will be in the new order?
9. The execution of Anne Boleyn is one of the most frightening moments in English history. Anne’s last words are scripted to appease the King. What do you think would have been Anne’s last words had there not been any consequences?
10. Does the novel make you reconsider your view of the Tudors?

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - quotes

  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel  

Bring Up the Bodies Quotes  

“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”   

“The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.”   

“Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”   

“Those who are made can be unmade.”   

 “You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”   

“He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.”   

“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumor, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”   

“He needs guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.”   

“It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.”   

“Once he had watched Liz making a silk braid. One end was pinned to the wall and on each finger of her raised hands she was spinning loops of thread, her fingers flying so fast he couldn’t see how it worked. ‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.”   

“Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.”   

 “A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.”   

“Erasmus says that you should praise a ruler even for qualities he does not have. For the flattery gives him to think. And the qualities he presently lacks, he might go to work on them.”   

“Anne's lovers are phantom gentlemen, flitting by night with adulterous intent. They come and go by night, unchallenged. They skim over the river like midges, flicker against the dark, their doublets sewn with diamonds. The moon sees them , peering from her hood of bone, and Thames water reflects them, glimmering like fish, like pearls.”   

“~ You know young Francis Weston? He that waits on the king? His people are giving out that you’re a Hebrew... Next time you’re at court, take your cock out and put it on the table and see what he says to that. ~ I do that anyway, if the conversation flags.”   

“How many men can say, as I must, 'I am a man whose only friend is the King of England'? I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing.”   

“God knows our hearts. There is no need for an idle formula or an intermediary. No need for language either: God is beyond translation.”   

At Kathy's September 2015

Notes from 'Excellent Sheep' by Dorota Ponikiewska

Liberal Art – “purpose to help you learn and reflect in the widest and deepest sense, beyond the requirements of work and career; for the sake of citizenship, for the sake of leaving well with others; above all, for the sake of building a self that is strong and creative and free”.

“Humanistic knowledge relates to our experience of the world, to what reality feels like”.

“Art insist the fundamental moral lesson: that you are not the center of universe, that other were not created for your benefits.  Art teaches empathy and cultivates the emotional intelligence; maybe it can make you a better person”.

“Art does not give you information; it gives you life”.

“Today we are suffering from such a cadre of technocrats, with just such a specialized elite. And lack of ability to think outside of disciplinary boundaries”.

Heather Wilson: “As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why. . . .”

 “Teaching is not and engineering problem.  It is not a question of transferring a certain quantity of information from one brain to another. “Educate” means “leap forth”.”

“Thinking is the skill you do not learn from the book, video or website, you learned directly from another person”.

“Remember, that the central intellectual ability that you are supposed to develop in college is that of analyzing other people’s arguments and formulating your own”.

The values of seminars.  “The purpose of seminar is to enable your professor to mode and shape your mental skill (guided, collaborated, and open-ended discussions about the materials).

College teaching is a slow, painstaking, difficult process”. 

Students need mentors (validations and connections).

“The most important job of advisors is to help students understand themselves, to face and take responsibility for their decisions, and to support and free them to make choices that are at odds with the expectations others have for them”.

“Learning is an emotional experience, and mentorship is rooted in the intimacy of intellectual exchange.  Something important passes between you, something almost sacred.  Socrates remarks that the bond between a teacher and a student lasts a lifetime, even once the two parted company”.

“Between 1960 and 1990, federal research funding quadrupled while average teaching house fell by half. Publish or perish:  professors’ loyalties say with the discipline not with their institutions. Teachers do not have the time to spend with students, they dedicate their time to research. “

“One-to-one connection with the teacher is hard to come by, and real intellectual dialogue almost impossible (despite the fact that Yale had a student –teacher ratio 6:1).”

“MOOC – massive open online courses.  MOOC has nothing to do with an access to education.  Coursera at. al  are for profit companies, and the universities with whom they work expect to see a return on their considerable investment. College is not like a cable television, or other online service.”

“Solution to the crisis, is for college to bring back teaching to the center of their mission.   Universities need to staff their courses with real professors again, not academic lettuce-pickers.”

 

“Look at the alternative lists like College That Change Lives, Hidden Ivies or the Washington Monthly College Guide and Ranking, which measures institutions by their commitment to social good. Look for school that is going to care about you, not the new MBA program in the Gulf. Be skeptical of places that tout curricular flexibility rather than intellectual rigor. “

“Forget about the ranking. Rankings lump together very different schools, make meaningless distinctions among essentially identical ones, ad measure market position rather than educational quality.    Go to school you connect with, not, as students almost always do, the most prestigious one can let you in.”

Diversity.  “Visit any elite campus across our great nation, and you can thrill the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals.  Kids at the schools like Stanford think that their environment is diverse if one comes from Missouri, another one from Pakistan, or one plays the cello and the other one lacrosse - never mind that all of them have parents who are bankers or doctors.  They are not meeting “all kinds of people” as they like to say.  They are meeting the same kind of people; they just happen to come from all kinds of places.”

College admission process.  “Schools are stoking their students’ ego.  It makes for happy customers.  It primes the donation pump.   The flattery:  you are great because you are great.”

“There is nothing wrong with taking pride in your intellect or achievement.  There is something wrong with the smugness and self-congratulations that elite schools connive at from the moment that fat envelope arrive in the mail.”

“It is time that the schools need to rethink their concept of merit. If schools are going to train a better class of leaders that the ones we have today, ask themselves what kind of qualities they need to promote and  how to select for them,.  Time to change the admission criteria. We want kinds with resilience, self-reliance, independence of spirit, genuine curiosity and creativity, and willingness to take risks and make mistakes. “

At Joanna's August 2015

One Hundred Years of Solitude - discussion questions

1. What kinds of solitude occur in the novel (for example, solitude of pride, grief, power, love, or death), and with whom are they associated? What circumstances produce them? What similarities and differences are there among the various kinds of solitude?

2. What are the purposes and effects of the story's fantastic and magical elements? How does the fantastic operate in the characters' everyday lives and personalities? How is the magical interwoven with elements drawn from history, myth, and politics?

3. Why does Garcia Marquez make repeated use of the "Many years later" formula? In what ways does this establish a continuity among past, present, and future? What expectations does it provoke? How do linear time and cyclical time function in the novel?

4. To what extent is Macondo's founding, long isolation, and increasing links with the outside world an exodus from guilt and corruption to new life and innocence and, then, a reverse journey from innocence to decadence?

5. What varieties of love occur in the novel? Does any kind of love transcend or transform the ravages of everyday life, politics and warfare, history, and time itself?

5. What is the progression of visitors and newcomers to Macondo, beginning with the gypsies? How does each new individual and group affect the Buendias, the town, and the story?

6. What is the importance of the various inventions, gadgets, and technological wonders introduced into Macondo over the years? Is the sequence in which they are introduced significant?

7. What is Melquiades's role and that of his innovations, explorations, and parchments? What is the significance of the "fact" that Melquiades "really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude"? Who else returns, and why?

8. When and how do politics enter the life of Macondo? With what short-term and long-term consequences? Do the social-political aspects of life in Macondo over the years parallel actual events and trends?

9. What types of women (from Ursula and Pilar to Meme and Amaranta Ursula) and what types of men (from Jose Arcadio to Aureliano Babilonia) are distinguishable? What characteristics do the men share? What characteristics do the women share?

10. What dreams, prophecies, and premonitions occur in the novel? With which specific characters and events are they associated, and what is their purpose?

11. When, how, and in what guises does death enter Macondo? With what consequences?

12. On the first page we are told that "The world was so recent that many things lacked names." What is the importance of names and of naming (of people, things, and events) in the novel?

12. How do geography and topography — mountains, swamps, river, sea, etc. — affect Macondo's history, its citizens' lives, and the novel's progression?

14. What aspects of the Buendia family dynamics are specific to Macondo? Which are reflective of family life everywhere and at any time? How do they relate to your experience and understanding of family life?

15. How does Garcia Marquez handle the issue and incidence of incest and its association with violence beginning with Jose Arcadio and Ursula's marriage and the shooting of Prudencio Aguilar? Is the sixth-generation incest of Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Ursula inevitable?
(Questions issued by publishers.)

At Jackie's May 2015

At Doreen's in April 2015

"Journey by Moonlight”- introduction and discussion questions

Antal Szerb (1901-1945) was a writer, scholar, critic and translator born to Jewish parents but baptized Catholic. Multilingual, he lived in Hungary, France, Italy and England, and after graduating in German and English he rapidly established himself as a prolific scholar, publishing books on drama and poetry, studies of Ibsen and Blake, and histories of English and Hungarian literature.

At the age of 39, Szerb wrote an authoritative History of World Literature. He wrote his first novel, The Pendragon Legend, in 1934, followed by Journey by Moonlight in 1937 and The Queen's Necklace in 1943. These, and a collection of his short stories, Love in a Bottle, are also published in English by Pushkin Press. Szerb was killed in a concentration camp in January 1945.

“Journey by Moonlight”

1.      Did you like this book? 

2.      What do you think about  Mihaily and Erzsi as a  newly-weds and their honeymoon in Venice?

3.      Did it surprise you when Mihaily suddenly left his new wife in the hotel room and was wandering the back streets until dawn?

4.      Why Erzsi’s ex-husband Zoltan, writes to Mihaily, giving him instructions on how to care for Erzsi?

5.      How important for Mihaily is his past circle of friends he was part of? (Tamas and his sister Eva, Ervin, and Janos)

6.      Why all of them were obsessed with drama and death?

7.      Hwo would you describe Mihaly’s relationship with Tamas and Eva?  Was this a true friendship?

8.      Did it surprise you when Mihaily  left his wife at a railway station (although we all know the possibilities for getting on the wrong train at a busy station) and  when he realizes that  he has done the wrong thing  he run  away?

9.      When Erzsi realizes that her marriage is based on fiction?

10.  How would you describe Mihaly’s relationship with Tamas?  Was this a true friendship?

11.  While wondering  through Italy, Mihaily meets with two people from the past, János Szepetneki, an arch-manipulator and now a motorcycle-riding criminal, and the Catholic convert Ervin, who appears as Father Severinus.  What do we learn from these meetings?

12.  After the “incidental” separation with Mihaily, Erszi goes to Paris and lives with her girlfriend.  How do you describe her life in Paris?

113.  Is nostalgia what eats at Mihály? Mihály told his doctor “I know what’s wrong with me… Acute nostalgia. I want to be young again. Is there a cure for that?” 

14.  Why Mihaily is obsessed with Eva?  What happen after they finally meets? 

15.  Do you agree with this opinion that “Szerb’s narrative is a remarkable, painstaking study of a man’s fascination with his own mortality.”?

116.  Later we learn that Mihaily is Journeying from Venice to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, loses himself in in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside.  What is he searching for? Is he trying to resurrect his lost youth?  Is this the last change to have scandalous adventures before  he returns to the dull adult life?

17.  Do you agree with this opinion that “Szerb’s narrative is a remarkable, painstaking study of a man’s fascination with his own mortality”?

18.  Did the ending of this book surprise you?  Why?

On Books...

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” 
― Charles William Eliot