This month’s story, and our last of the 2016-2017 cycle, is John Cheever’s “the Swimmer.” First published in The New Yorker in 1964, this is perhaps Cheever’s most popular and heavily anthologized story, and it serves as a fitting close to our cycle. Perhaps Neddy Merrill’s journey across the swimming pools of his suburban neighborhood
This month’s story is John Steinbeck’s “The Snake”, written in 1934 and published the year after. It forms part of The Long Valley collection, which was published in 1938. The story is set in Monterrey, California, and features a character, Dr. Phillips, that is based on the marine biologist and philosopher Ed Ricketts, a friend
This month we turn back to the past for Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat,” first published in 1926. Hurston is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was published in 1937, and which explores many of the same themes put forth in “Sweat” in much the same style. Hurston’s use of eye
We return to the late 20th century with this month’s story, Amy Hempel’s “The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.” This story was first published in 1983, and it is Hempel’s first and most widely anthologized. It serves as a poignant example of Hempel’s minimalist style and deep tenderness, features that have marked much of
Since our March meeting falls so soon after our previous one, this month’s story is short enough to read in one go: Kate Chopin’s “The Storm.” Originally written in 1898, it wasn’t published until 1969, 65 years after Chopin’s death. It isn’t hard to imagine why this particular story remained unpublished for so long. Its
This month’s poem, “Poetry,” by Marianne Moore, is a curious little poem. Moore wrote the first version of this poem in 1924, and then spent nearly five decades revising it, finally settling on a three-line version that she included in her 1967 volume, The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. (You can read the two versions
No es extraño que una biblioteca ofrezca entre sus actividades de animación cultural un club de lectura pero sí es peculiar que se desarrolle sobre lecturas anglosajonas en inglés y que el coloquio se realice en ese idioma. Que además se haya iniciado en el 2005 y que diez años más tarde siga activo nos
Hello everyone. This month’s story is Edith Wharton’s “The Angel at the Grave,” first published in Scribner’s magazine in 1901. The story relates, among other things, the passage of a major literary figure’s legacy from one of universal acclaim to the dustbin of history, an obsolete relic from a forgotten past. Perhaps some of you
This month’s story is Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” first published in 1973. While this story is predicated on an understanding of the state of the African-American community in the early 1970s, it isn’t necessary that you be completely up-to-date on this history in order for you to register its impact. The lessons of “Everyday Use”
Welcome to the inaugural session of the 2015-2016 English Reading Circle! This year’s cycle is entitled “American Women’s Writing,” and it opens with a story by a woman whose stature, demure though it may be, casts a long shadow over the American literary landscape: Eudora Welty. Her story “Why I Live at the PO,” first