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Bookclub session 11/7/99

Book and Resources

"The Magus" by John Fowles
"The Magus" by John Fowles

related links:

John Fowles--The Web Site
Michael Chesley Johnson - Fowles Quotes

Attendees

Paul (I), Branko, Darija, Lorena, Paul (II), Lorena, Soyeba, Holger

Place

Paul's (I) place

Food

Chips & Salsa

Review

Those who read it all agreed that this is the best book so far. 

Minutes

As usual, the book was not read by everyone.

This times standings:

member status
Paul (I) read it
Paul (II) read it
Soyeba read it
Lorena page 350
Holger page 160 (and no good excuse)
Branko "But I read 'A Suitable Boy', .." - page 100
Darija well, I guess out of solidarity to Branko, ..

Since  the uneven distribution of knowledge about the book, Lorena proposed that someone who read it gives an overview about the content of the complete book before we go into the discussion.

It turned out that just by doing that, the 'narrator' already put a lot of interpretations into the mere plot, so it eventually became interesting to see, how the book was understood.

Certainly, the book leaves a lot to be interpreted by the reader. Even within the first passages of the book (which were read by more people than the complete book) we had disagreements about who's to blame for what happened.

It was very interesting to see how we interpreted the actions of the main character Nicolas, which said a lot about each one of us.

The book reveals a lot about one's perceptions of reality.

To increase the chance that more people read the assignment for the next meeting, we decided to go with shorter books - but with two:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story
and Many Lives, Many Masters.

 

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