I
started a new classics book club at my local library with my friend Barb. We
meet quarterly and chose for our first book, a favorite of us both, Pride and
Prejudice by Jane Austen. Our meeting in
April went very well with a lively discussion.
There were only four of us there – hopefully we will have more attendees
at our next meeting next week.
To
prepare for the meeting, I made a poster board with pictures of the different actors
that played Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth to use during discussion. Barb and I put
together an agenda and list of discussion questions beforehand. We started with an icebreaker, a discussion
of what was going on in history when Pride and Prejudice was published, a
discussion of some of the customs of the day, and then went into
questions. We also had a quiz with a
prize at the end – but we ran out of time. I also had brought a bag of my
favorite Pride and Prejudice variations, modernizations, etc. to discuss, but
we ran out of time for that as well.
I
prepared by listening to the audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice that is
narrated by Alison Larkin. I have
reviewed it before on my blog at this link.
I enjoyed listening to it again as usual. Larkin has a delightful voice with a slight
English accent and is a wonderful narrator. I also watched the 1995 miniseries
with my eight year old daughter Penelope.
She ended up providing a question for discussion with her assessment of
Mr. Wickham. As he and Lydia drove away
from Longbourn at the end, Penelope said, “He isn’t going to stayed married to
Lydia. He is just going to run away with
another fifteen year old girl.” I
thought that was a pretty astute observation from an eight-year old girl!
Have
you every hosted a book club where you discussed Pride and Prejudice? How did it go and how did you plan your
meeting?
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