Bend Classic Book Club Meetup Group

Well, it's back. We skipped this in November as many of us were gone.
Earnest is still a witty critique of Victorian mores. It's worth the effort to go under the surface. Lots of things going on in Britain, British society and in Wilde's life.
There are lots of on line performances--too many to count, including a recent one with Colin Firth, so find what appeals to you. Earnest is at Ashland this year, starting in March, so this could be your warm up for that.
The National Theater in London has a very creative version in movie theaters but not until the end of February. Reviews are interesting in themselves. "A fabulous romp" per the New York Times.

There was a time when a tightly controlled Communist government ruled the Soviet Union. Khrushchev had a much lighter hand than Stalin. He hoped to move his war weary country away from a dispirited and poor existence with positive political, economic, agricultural, international and intellectual changes.
So he allowed the 1962 publication of A Day in the Life. It was the beginning of the end of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. And the Party turned on him; two years later Brezhnev orchestrated a coup.

Readable, horrifying and thank goodness short compared with the Gulag Archipelago.

Painful, tedious, self absorbed, one of the best novels of the 20th century--Read or reread Holden Caulfield's story and decide if it's just another unformed adolescent pot boiler or a 50's Ulysses.

And of course come to argue what a classic novel is.

For extra credit look at some of the voluminous criticism and interpretation out there waiting to swallow you.