Didsbury Book Group

17/04/10 – New website up and running. It’s still in development so there may be some changes, but I think I quite like this layout. I’m missing a bunch of reviews so I’ll be doing them when I have time.

http://bookclub.gmorgan.net will be deleted shortly.

The next meeting will be at the Woodstock on 03/05/10. The book chosen for discussion was ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’.

It’s been suggested that formulaic questions may help with the discussion. To give us a bit of a head start, I’ve put a list of suggested questions below:

What is significant about the title?
What are the conflicts in Alice in Wonderland? What types of conflict?
How does Lewis Carroll reveal character in Alice in Wonderland?
What are some themes in the story? How do they relate to the plot and characters?
What are some symbols in Alice in Wonderland? How do they relate to the plot and characters?
Is Alice consistent in her actions? Is she a fully developed character?
Does Alice change and/or develop as a human being?
How does Alice relate to other characters in the book?
Does the story end the way you expected?
What is the central/primary purpose of the story?
How does the past figure into the novel?
How essential is the setting to the story? Could the story have taken place anywhere else?
How does Carroll use poetry in this novel? Why?

Appropriately, it’s been over a week since I resolved to write this review. Procrastinating about reviewing a book called ‘The To Do List’…. I think that’s almost Zen. continue reading…

Based very firmly on a true story, the Surgeon of Crowthorne concerns the inestimable assistance one Dr W.C. Minor gave in assembling the first concise Oxford English Dictionary.
He was deeply interested in language as well as being a keen painter and a man of science.

Oh, and he was a paranoid, delusional, sex-obsessed, xenophobic murderer as well.

continue reading…