Mister Dickens

In Patagonia

Our book choice for March 2012 is In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. Chatwin’s exquisite account of his journey through “the uttermost part of the earth,” that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome and Charles Darwin formed part of his “survival of the fittest” theory.

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Hard Times

Our book choice for February 2012 is Hard Times by Charles Dickens. The novel is set in Coketown, a northern industrial city. Thomas Gradgrind rules his family and his school according to Utilitarianism, the philosophy of the time, which has as its aim the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number of people. However, the form of Utilitarianism which

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Alone in Berlin

Our book choice for September 2011 is Alone in Berlin (UK title) by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann.  It is 1940, France has capitulated, Nazism seems impregnable. Otto Quangel is a dry, withdrawn working man, the foreman at a furniture factory – soon to be turned over to the production of coffins, in response to need.

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Black Swan Green

The choice for June 2011 is Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Black Swan tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy.

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