What a weekend!  Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray and the discussions wore us out mentally and the English Country Dancing Saturday night wore us out physically.  From what I heard, a good time was had by all.  Vanity Fair is a satire of English society in the early 1800's with humorous sarcasm on almost every page.  I thought our second discussion, of themes in the novel and their effect on and use by the characters, was particularly good.  What is power and what are the means to power:  wealth, beauty, sex, physical size and strength, rank, status, title, parental upbringing, gender, religion, education?  And, how is that affected by the vanity, or lack of vanity, of various characters?  Throughout, many characters were capable of admirable qualities of ambition, initiative, honor, morality, faith, courage, generosity, kindness, truthfulness neatness, humility, while those same characters, and others, could also display cowardice, selfishness, meanness, gullibility, victimhood, slovenliness, complacency, obliviousness, and, above all, vanity.  Of course, all of this is affected by outside events such as changes in English law, colonial empire, and the Napoleonic War.  Many of the participants in the discussions took Thackeray to task for not mentioning the masses of wretchedly poor and exploited workers necessary to support that oblivious, vain society.  His friend and competitor Charles Dickens certainly took a different tack.
     Saturday afternoon we were treated to a talk on history and music of the period of the novel by William Corbett-Jones.  He also played a short video of music by Schubert and a video of the amazingly energetic Carlos Kleiber conducting Beethoven.  Thank you, Bill.  For our Saturday night party we had port and cheddar cheese, and soft drinks to the dance tunes of the Humuhumus (See the article below for more information.) and almost everyone was dancing at some point to old English Country Dancing music of the period of Vanity Fair.  The band is experienced working with beginners and instructed us in the dancing.  They reached back to the early 1600s for one piece.  They are great to dance to and listen to and I am not biased just because my daughter is the flute player.  There was much talk Sunday morning about the fun and being worn out with sore muscles from the dancing.
    I thought all the discussions were exceptional this year with the participants well prepared.  Many thanks go to the discussion leaders:  Louise DiMattio, Gary Geltmeyer, Rick White, Jim Hall, Sheri Kindsvater, and Kay White with Kay Blaney as alternate.  Mary Wood, as always, was instrumental in organizing the prediscussion.  Thank you, Louise, for putting together such a great Long Novel Weekend.

Our first meeting was well attended with sixteen people participating.  The discussion of The Declaration of Independence was lively with everybody involved.  We are looking forward to our second meeting in September.
We extend an open invitation to all in the bay area, especially San Francisco and Marin County to join us. The Library is near the Presidio and easy to get to.  Current plans are to meet on the second Tuesday of each month.  Please notify Cliff if you wish to attend at clifford.louie@sbcglobal.net or by phone at 415-750-1786.