December Not Fiction Book Discussions

Perhaps you've heard this Groucho Marx quotation: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." The stories we tell and the stories we are drawn to listen to are some of the most important relationships of our lives.

 My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead is a memoir about Mead's relationship with George Eliot's novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. From her first encounter with the novel as a young girl in school to her repeated readings through young adulthood and early career and into middle age and family life, Mead found instructive, inspiring, and consoling parallels between the plot lines of the book and her own life, parallels that only became understandable as she grew into them. She says, "A book may not tell us exactly how to live our own lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book."

What is your relationship with Middlemarch? Are you as fond of it as Mead is, or have you just become acquainted with it through Mead's memoir? Which story lines, characters, and relationships resonate the most with your life? If you have not read Middlemarch, has Mead's book inspired you to do so?

Virginia Woolf characterized Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." What did she mean by this? Are marriage plots and happy endings merely childish fantasies?

Do you have a relationship with a book like the one Mead has with Middlemarch? What has this book revealed to you about your life over the years, and what has your life helped you understand about the book?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, December 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, December 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.