This Month's Book:
Frankenstein
by
Mary Shelley
-176 pages-
"We will each write a story," Byron announced to his next-door neighbors, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley. The friends were summering on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland in 1816, Shelley still unknown as a poet and Byron writing the third canto of "Childe Harold." When continued rains kept them confined indoors, all agreed to Byron's proposal.
The illustrious poets failed to complete their ghost stories, but Mary Shelley rose supremely to the challenge. With "Frankenstein, " she succeeded admirably in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in her own words, "would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror -- one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart."
Discussion Highlights:
Not many people came to the meeting. A lot of different things have been going on with schedules and mainly the club leader's health. This will be the last meeting until we are able to work schedules out and the club leader gets better. Everyone liked this book. The letters at the beginning are a little dry though so it was dull for us to get through those. The story picked up once it started. We enjoyed learning how this story became to be. We loved learning that Mary Shelley created the Science Fiction genre by writing and publishing Frankenstein. It is amazing that a female started a genre mainly geared towards males. Her symbolism to the way society was about women, religion, and science during her time is beautifully expressed.
Next Month's Book:
Me Talk Pretty One Day
by
David Sedaris
-272 pages-
Our 14th monthly meeting will be on
