In 2017, the discussions will be on Second Mondays at 7:00 PM.
The popular winter reading series returns! Stop in and select a book or two from the display in the Athenæum Reading Room and come to the discussions on the above dates listed. Everyone is welcome.
The popular winter reading series returns! Stop in and select a book or two from the display in the Athenæum Reading Room and come to the discussions on the above dates listed. Everyone is welcome.
January’s author is Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). He was a very popular writer in his lifetime and also the first, and youngest, English-language writer to receive the Nobel prize in literature. His most lasting works include Just So Stories, Jungle Book, Kim, Captains Courageous and poetry such as If and Gunga Din.
Many of his works were deeply controversial, such as The White Man’s Burden, which is considered racist and imperialistic. T.S. Eliot said Kipling was, “a writer impossible wholly to understand and quite impossible to belittle.” George Orwell thought him, “morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting,” yet a voice to be heard for its sense of responsibility.
How are Kipling’s works perceived now, a century after they were written?
2017 Reading List
January 9 Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
February 13 Edna Ferber (1885-1968)
March 13 Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
April 10 E.M. Delafield (1890-1943)
May 8 James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)