The classics group began as an offshoot of the gay men's group in fall 2003. My friend Rob Stuart and I love classic lit, especially 19th century, and as there was no changing the contemporary bent of the original club, we put out some feelers to see if there were any old-schoolers like ourselves around who wanted to home in on the finely aged stuff--a kind of East End Oprah's Book Club--and there were. This group was designed to be mixed, the only perameter for membership a love of old books, and it is, delightfully so, with just as many women now as men. There's an endearing seriousness with which each of the members approaches the discussions, and days-long afterglows once the reading and talking have ended.
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Next Meeting
1/5/10 Native Son Richard Wright
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Books Read
11/09 Pere Goriot Honore de Balzac
10/09 The Unicorn Iris Murdoch
9/09 Kingsblood Royal Sinclair Lewis
7/09 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann
5/09 A Passage to India E. M. Forster
4/09 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
3/09 Tom Jones Henry Fielding
1/09 The Trial Franz Kafka
12/08 Justine Lawrence Durrell
11/08 First Love Ivan Turgenev
10/08 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
9/08 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis
7/08 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
6/08 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
4/08 The Blithedale Romance Nathaniel Hawthorne
3/08 The Reef Edith Wharton
1/08 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
1/08 Persuasion Jane Austen
11/07 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert
10/07 The Good Soldier Ford Maddox Ford
9/07 Hangover Square Patrick Hamilton
8/07 Martin Eden Jack London
6/07 The Code of the Woosters P. G. Wodehouse
5/07 The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence
4/07 Brighton Rock Graham Greene
3/07 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
1/07 Therese Raquin Emile Zola
12/06 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe
11/06 Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson
10/06 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
9/06 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
7/06 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
6/06 Frankenstein Mary Shelley
5/06 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene
4/06 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
3/06 The Song of the Lark Willa Cather
1/06 The Ambassadors Henry James
12/05 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
11/05 East of Eden John Steinbeck
9/05 Emma Jane Austen
7/05 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
5/05 The Red and the Black Stendhal
4/05 Light in August William Faulkner
3/05 Middlemarch George Eliot
1/05 Turn of the Screw/Death in Venice Henry James/Thomas Mann
12/04 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
11/04 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
9/04 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser
8/04 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev
6/04 House of Mirth Edith Wharton
5/04 Portrait of a Lady Henry James
3/04 House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
2/04 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
12/03 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
10/03 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
9/03 Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
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