Calendar of Events
Click on event title for information.
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Poetry Weekend
November 15-16, 2008
Asilomar
April 3-5, 2009
Leaders'Workshop
May 2, 2009
Annual Picnic
June 14, 2009
Long Novel Weekend
August 22-23, 2009
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October 2008
Dear Great Books Supporter,
The Fall-Winter 2008 issue of Reading Matters, in full color, is now available on our website or click here for direct access.
Included in this E-Newsletter is an invitation to our 23rd Annual Great Books Poetry Weekend, a Long Novel Weekend Recap, and info on Asilomar Great Books Weekend 2009. Also, see the info on the upcoming San Jose Book Group Expo; you just may want to attend.
The information in Some Useful Great Books Links has been updated. Check out the impressive schedule at Symposium GBI including partnering up with Berkeley Rep's staging of Arabian Nights.
If you know someone who might be interested in receiving this E-Newsletter, just click on the "Forward email" link at the bottom of this page. Enter your friend's name and email address and we will send him or her a copy.
Now you can refer your friends to our website and they can sign up there also. Your friends need only enter their email address in the yellow box on the website and click "GO".
There are a number of links (click here or on blue letters with underline) available for more information. You may have to double click depending on your email program. You can reach our website by clicking on "More about us" in the Quick Links box or by clicking on the GBSF logo at the top of this page.
We
are continuing the Great Books discussions founded by Robert Hutchins
and Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago in 1947. Great Books Counci of San Francisco (serving
Northern California) is a volunteer organization of motivated readers.
We coordinate over 40 existing groups, provide leader training and
sponsor literary events in scenic locations.
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23rd Annual Great Books Poetry Weekend
The Manor at Westminster Retreat in Alamo
The Great Books Poetry Weekend is held annually (usually in November) at the Westminster Retreat in Alamo, California. Each year, the weekend includes three discussions, and usually a guest speaker on Saturday evening.
1. Virgin Spring by Kim Addonizio
2. Anger, Gluttony, Grief, Sloth, Silenceby Stephen Dobyns
3. Cassandra by Edward Arlington Robinson
4. The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me by Delmore Schwartz
5. The Body Politic by Donald Hall
6. Tectonics by Ted Kooser
Saturday afternoon: Poets on Poetry
1. Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
2. Paradoxes and Oxymorons by John Ashbery
3. The Poem as Mask by Muriel Rukeyser
4. On the Subject of Poetry by W.S. Merwin
5. Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish
6. Non-Apologia by Dean Young
Sunday morning: Potpourri
1. Time and Materials by Robert Hass
2. One Need Not Be a Chamber... by Emily Dickinson
3. Holy Sonnet #14 by John Donne
4. Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson
5. To Autumn by John Keats
6. Don't Look Now, But... by Peter Viereck
At last year's first poetry discussion we were all asked what we liked or did not like about poetry. Sheri Kindsvater's response was "I hate poetry." At the suggestion of Roger Ellman, I asked Sheri to write a review of her weekend discussing poetry, which you may read by clicking here. She will be back this year.
To learn more about this event, please download this flyer and registration form. Or contact Theda & Oscar Firschein at 650-854-3980 or email oscarf1@earthlink.net.
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Long Novel Weekend Recap Pond above Walker Creek
We had a wonderful time at Walker Creek Ranch this year discussing Naguib Mahfouz's The Cairo Trilogy. This is the story of three generations of a single family told in three novels. The members of the family are the story, as well as is Egypt from 1919 to the early 1940s. Over 1,000 pages of reading resulted in very good discussions, from all reports. Thanks go to our discussion leaders Claudia O'Callaghan, Chuck Scarcliff, Rick Flynn, Gery Geltmeyer, Louise Morgan and Louise DiMattio.
Everyone loved 'William Corbett-Jones' presentation on Saturday evening, entitled "Egypt from the Mamlukes". We had Powerpoint slides and music, along with an excellent 45-minute talk, and another half hour of Q&A. Then we had a great party with wine and baklava (yum), figs, dates and pistacchio nuts. The party lasted until the wee hours.
The editor of The Danville Weekly joined us for the weekend and wrote about her experience. To read the complete article click here. We also want to thank her for the impromptu talk she gave to our publicity committee early Sunday morning.
From The Danville Weekly, Friday, August 29, 2008
Diablo Views: A novel weekend
by Dolores Fox Ciardelli
I ventured outside my comfort zone last weekend, up to Walker Creek Ranch, 14 miles outside Petaluma. It wasn't the ranch that was the challenge, although it did mean following a map along winding rural roads. It was the activity that was somewhat intimidating: It was the Long Novel Weekend, presented by the San Francisco Bay Area Great Books Council.
Great Books groups discuss works by Chekhov, Aristotle, Plato, Conrad, Kant, to name a few, which are not exactly casual reading. So while I loved the idea of reading a long book and then discussing it, I had to wonder: Am I "good enough" for "great books"? Or should I look for a group called "good books"? Or even "mediocre books"? I decided to take a chance. (To read more click here.)
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Book Group Expo: October 25-26, 2008
The Great Books Foundation is a proud sponsor of the third annual Book Group Expo in San Jose, California, on October 25-26, 2008. Book Group Expo is a two-day festival devoted to book groups and discussion. Activities include author-moderated literary salons, book signings, and the opportunity to buy new books and products.
Connect with other book group members and readers at this unique literary event. Some members of the Great Books Council of San Francisco will also be there. Join us in San Jose for a memorable weekend and stop by and visit us in the marketplace! To learn more, or to buy tickets, visit the Book Group Expo website at www.bookgroupexpo.com.
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Asilomar Great Books Weekend 2009
April 3-5, 2009
This year is our fifty-first Asilomar Weekend, beginning another half century of Great Books discussions at one of the most beautiful conference centers on the West Coast. This year we will take an excursion to places on three continents. We start with poetry writers from England, Germany and the United States:
1. Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
2. Sonnet #116 (The Marriage Sonnet) by Wm. Shakespeare
3. For My Daughte by Weldon Kees
4. Ephemera by Rainer Maria Rilke
5. Equation by Charles Wright
6. The World Is Too Much With Us by Wm. Wordsworth
Then we take a river cruise with Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. Leaving the mouth of the great river, as our paddle wheel river boat transforms into a modern cruise ship, we take a long sea voyage to South Africa for Disgrace by Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee. Departing Capetown, we head north and turn right through the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean. Our cruise ship becomes an ancient trireme, a freight and passenger boat powered by three tiers of oars on each side, as we approach ancient Greece to visit Thebes and discuss Sophocles' Antigone. Come join us for the trip. Click here for more information and a registration form (Don't forget your passport.)
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Some Useful Great Books Links
GBSF is affiliated with the Great Books Foundation which was started in 1947 by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler and produces most of the reading material used by Great Books discussion groups around the country. Their website provides a wealth of information and a list to find groups in your area or how to start a discussion group if one is not available near you. GBF also publishes Junior Great Books for use in schools or at home for K-12 students. The Great Books Chicago 2009, May 1-3 theme is "Eye of the Beholder."
Symposium Great Books Institute discussion schedule for October: John Locke & J. J. Rousseau: 2 Treatises on Government and Discourse on the Origins of Inequality; Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography (In partnership with Humanities West's lecture series October 17-18, 2008 at the Herbst Theatre, San Francisco. Discounted tickets available for the Symposium Community.); Jorge Luis Borges: 3 short stories from Labyrinths; Trick or Treat: 3 Euripides Tragedies (Alcestis, Hippolytus & Medea; Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own; November: James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Hamilton, Madison, Jay: The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers (selections); Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Transcendentalists, Self-Reliance, and Nature; The Arabian Nights (selections) This is paired with an Optional Performance on Sunday, November 23rd @ 7pm, a Cultural Pairing with Berkeley Repertory Theatre's staging of Mary Zimmerman's Arabian Nights. (Discount tickets available for anyone in the Symposium Community.) Jean Paul Sartre: Nausea. Check the website for dates and times. Some of these discussions are full. 325 Hayes St., San Francisco, CA 94102 415-437-4000.
Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, founded by Mortimer Adler and Max Weismann, exists to help citizens understand why philosophy is everybody's business and to promulgate the insights and ideals embedded in Dr. Adler's lifelong intellectual work in the fields of Philosophy, Liberal Education, Ethics and Politics. This is a comprehensive website with something for everybody interested in Great Books and Great Ideas.
Classical Pursuits offers learning vacations around the world with location appropriate Great Books discussions as well as Toronto Pursuits, July 12-17, 2009. Travel destinations in 2009 include: Ecuador, Venice, Savannah, Russia, Corfu, Philadelphia. Ann Kirkland also produces one of the best e-newsletters available: Convivium.
London Theatre Tour for Thinkers VI, October 20-25, 2008. Six days of the world's best theatre followed each morning by a Great Books type shared inquiry discussion led by Ted M. Kraus, a veteran NYC drama critic and experienced GB discussion leader. Contact Ted at 925-939-3658 or tedmkraus@yahoo.com.
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Thank you for your interest in Great Books. Is there something you would like to know that we can add? This is your e-newsletter, so let us know.
Be sure to forward this email to your friends who might be interested in Great Books. Just click on Forward email at the bottom left.
Sincerely,
Jim Hall
Great Books Council of San Francisco |
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