Library Book Club seeks Regent readers for spring semester

The Library Book Club seeks readers to share ideas about the books and authors on our spring reading list. The five books on our list include classics and contemporary works that support the Quality-Enhancement Plan on global competence. Three of the selections will also support special events at the Library or University:  Night, Elie Wiesel’s memoir of Auschwitz, will complement a remembrance service and exhibition opening to be held at the Library on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on January 27. The House on Mango Street will supplement the University’s 2011 Global Roundtable on America’s diverse Latino communities. In April, during National Library Week, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman will lead a discussion of stories by S. Y. Agnon, universally regarded as the greatest modern writer of Hebrew fiction.

All of us at Regent are very busy, but I hope this list will persuade students, staff, and faculty to reserve even twenty minutes a day for recreational and enrichment reading. Reading literature is not only one of life’s singular pleasures, but also, according to Samuel Johnson, a necessary discipline for acquiring discernment: “Literature is a kind of intellectual light which, like the light of the sun, enables us to see what we do not like; but who would wish to escape unpleasing objects, by condemning himself to perpetual darkness?”

For more information about the Library Book Club, including meeting times and our online discussion forum on LibraryThing, contact Harold Henkel at 352-4198 or harohen@regent.edu.

Library Book Club Schedule Spring 2011

Month

Author

Title

January

Elie Wiesel

Night

February

Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street

March

Marilynne Robinson

Gilead

April

S. Y. Agnon

Selected stories

May – June

Jane Austen

Emma