2014 Reading List

• A Lost Lady - Willa Cather
• Illiad - Homer
• Shadows and Images - Meriol Trevor
• Short Stories - Henry Lawson
• Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
• Anabasis - Xenophon (excerpt)
• Plutarch Lives
• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• Josef Pieper - Matt Anger
• Charles Dickens - G.K.Chesterton
• The Secret Lives of Buildings - Edward Hollis
• Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
• J.B.Powers

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL

by Richard Sheridan

Discussion Questions:

1. Is there a difference between gossiping and scandal-mongering?

2. What part does motive play? Consider Lady Candor and Lady Sneerwell.

3. Subject matter: fact or fiction? First or second-hand information? Naming names?

4.Consider these professionals and their boundaries: journalists, detectives, doctors, lawyers, confessors.

5. Are men and women equally tempted to scandal-mongering? How do we feel about the men in this play?

6. What part does idleness play in these characters, both men and women?

7. Reputations: who has more to lose?

8. What part does natural curiosity play?

9. Gossip disguised as a prayer request; are we guilty?

Are diamonds really a girl's best friend?

The Diamond As Big As the Ritz
by F.Scott Fitzgerald

1. What is the purpose of this story, and short stories in general? Unlike Chekhov, it isn't a slice of life. Unlike Poe, it's not written to horrify. What are we supposed to think or feel at the end? What impression is he trying to give?

2. Did the author keep us guessing? Was the ending a surprise?

3. Does Fitzgerald accurately portray the qualities of the rich and middle-class? Does his humor seem out-of-place in this story? What about life in Hades (MO)?

4.What is the mystique surrounding the Jazz Age? What is its enduring appeal?

Further reading: The Great Gatsby
Movies: The Great Gatsby, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2013 READING LIST

• The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• A Defense of Poetry - Percy Shelley
• A Masque of Reason - Robert Frost
• Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
• On Style - Arthur Schopenhauer
• A Passion in the Desert - Honore de Balzac
• The School for Scandal - Richard Sheridan
• Of Contentment - Epictetus (Book 1, Chapter 12 of the Discourses)
• Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
• The Mowing of the Field & Crooked Streets - Hilaire Belloc
• The Silence of the Sea - Hilaire Belloc