Book Discussions

Books discussions are a popular phenomenon across the country, with face to face discussion groups proliferating rapidly and while new audiences participate in the online environment. Given the number of books that touch on personal or societal experiences of aging, there are many possibilities for sites who wish to creat Age in America programming. Book discussions can be used as a means of engaging broader audiences in the topic and stimulating discussion on the implications of aging. However, beyond discussions of contemporary works, there are other possibilities for using texts to prompt discussion. Museums or libraries might use paintings, oral recordings, or excerpts from diaries or journals, or family history materials to engage audiences in varied “book discussions” that relate to specific experiences of aging in special settings.

The Passage of Time, The Meaning of Change: Perspectives by Five Writers From Maine
A Let's Talk About It Book Discussion Series sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council
http://www.mainehumanities.org/programs/talk-passage-of-time.html

The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett
Selections from Collected Lyrics, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Selections from One Man's Meat, by E. B. White
As We Are Now, by May Sarton
The Beans of Egypt, Maine, by Carolyn Chute

The Story-Teller's Story
Arizona Center for the Book, Phoenix, AZ—1995
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9801/cfb.html

The Arizona Center for the Book supported “The Story-Teller's Story,” a statewide reading and discussion series on autobiography for older adults. Developed by the National Council on Aging and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project loaned books to participants from seven host sites: Sun City, Parker, Tucson, Prescott, Bisbee, Scottsdale and Lake Havasu City. The books discussed were:

One Writer's Beginnings, by Eudora Welty
Black Boy, by Richard Wright
Patrimony, by Philip Roth
The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston

Elderquest and the Cinema and Literature of Age: New Models for the New Old Age
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Massachusetts—Boston
http://www.lets.umb.edu/elderquest/syllabus.html

The filmography used for this course is cited in the Film Series section, and the course's bibliography is listed below.

“The series explores the older hero in today's literature and film. Elder heroism differs from its younger version in focusing more on inward rather than outward journeys. The pace may be slower and less driven, but the goals are just as heroic, and the stakes are higher, for time is short.”

Recommended Books:

Carry Me Across the Water, by Ethan Canin
Praisesong for The Widow, by Paule Marshall
The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
Simon's Night, by Jon Hassler
All Passion Spent, by Vita Sackville West
About Schmidt and Schmidt Delivered, by Louis Begley