Numéro Book Club

The Night Circus

2012-02-04T12:20:00.001-08:00

by Erin Morgenstern

Please visit the author's website for more information.

http://erinmorgenstern.com/the-night-circus/

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

2012-02-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

by Walter Mosley

Christmas in Illinois: Behind the Stories

2011-12-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

edited by James Ballowe

Author James Ballowe talks about his book Christmas in Illinois

Shades of Grey

2011-10-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

by Jasper Fforde
Visit the author's website for information on this new novel, Shades of Grey.

The Other Wes Moore

2011-07-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

by Wes Moore
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Peoria Reads by reading and participating in the One City, One Book program. For more information visit http://bigreadpeoriareads.org/

Moonwalking with Einstein

2011-07-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

by Joshua Foer
Named one of the ten best books of 2011 so far, and #2 in nonfiction by Amazon.com.
Visit the author's website at http://joshuafoer.com
Available at all locations of the Peoria Public Library.

The Great Gatsby

2010-03-10T13:44:00.000-08:00

This book is also this year's choice for The Big Read: Peoria Reads program for 2010. For more information to go www.bigreadpeoriareads.org

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

2008-12-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

by Vendela Vida

About the book

Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission

2008-12-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

by Richard L. Harris

Moon Palace by Paul Auster

2008-10-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Click here for:

Summary of the book

Character information

Symbols and Motifs

Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

2008-09-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

From the Jacket:
In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima--and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now the son of one of the flag raisers has written a powerful account of six very different men who came together in a moment that will live forever.

To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of his Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island--an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo--three were killed during the battle--were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

Few books have ever captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

Discussion questions:

1. Discussion the meaning of patriotism. What is the relationship between duty and patriotism?

2. Private Tex Stanton, Second Platoon, Easy Company said, “Life was never regular again. We were changed from the day we put our feet in that sand.” (p. 69) How did the Battle of Iwo Jima change the men who fought there? Discuss how each of the six flag raisers were changed.

3. Discuss the qualities of a hero. Jack Bradley never viewed himself as a hero and felt that the real heroes of the Battle of Iwo Jima were the men who gave their lives. What role did the media play in making the six flag raisers heroes? How might these six men be considered symbols of all the heroic men who fought at Iwo Jima? In the book, James Bradley discusses the difference between a hero and a celebrity. How did President Roosevelt turn these heroes into celebrities?

4. Discuss the meaning of the inscription “Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue” that is on the face of the bronze statue of the six flag raisers that was unveiled at Arlington National Cemetery on November 10, 1954. The three surviving flag raisers attended the unveiling ceremony. James Bradley states that after that day, “Never again would they meet, never again would they serve the photograph.” (p. 178) How had these men “served the photograph”? Discuss whether new generations who visit the bronze statue can fully understand the impact the photograph had on the American people when it was first published.

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

2008-08-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Booklist Review: A hakawati is a storyteller in the Arab world, and so opulent and picaresque is Alameddine's novel, it can serve as a great fake book for aspiring Scheherazades. In this grand saga of a Beirut family with Armenian, English, and Druze roots, Alameddine, the author of three previous works of fiction, constructs stories within stories that encompass the world of the jinni,àthe tales of Abraham and Hagar, the legendary pigeon wars of Urfa, Lebanon's brutal civil war, and post-9/11 Beirut and L.A. At the center of this matrix is Osama al-Kharrat (his last name means exaggerator), grandson of a hakawati and son of a wealthy car dealer and a glamorous, sharp-tongued mother, one of many resplendently witty and wily women characters. After living in L.A. for 26 years, Osama has finally returned to Beirut in 2003 because his father is dying. His arrival sets off a cascade of memories and launchesà1,001 stories. The most thrilling involve the legendary Fatima, the hero Baybars, Osama's bon vivant uncle Jihad, and the hakawati himself, not to neglect the many diverting parables. Alameddine, himself a brilliant hakawati, exuberantly reclaims and celebrates the art and wisdom of the war-torn Middle East in this stupendous, ameliorating, many-chambered palace of a novel. -- Seaman, Donna (Reviewed 03-15-2008) (Booklist, vol 104, number 14, p27)

Flight by Sherman Alexie

2008-07-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Booklist Review: Its tough enough to be an orphan and a ward of the state, let alone a so-called half-breed. Heck, being 15 years old is no freaking picnic, especially if your face is so badly marred by acne your nickname is Zits. Add to that a devastating history of abuse, and no wonder Zits, a gun in each hand, is about to exact revenge on strangers in a bank. Has Alexie, a high-profile writer known for provocative, inventive, in-your-face fiction about Native American life, written a classic troubled youth-turned-killer tale? Of course not. This is a time-travel fable about the legacy of prejudice and pain. Zits is inexplicably catapulted back to 1975, where he inhabits the body of a white FBI agent confronting radical Indian activists, the first episode in an out-of-body odyssey. Smart, funny, and resilient, Zits is profoundly transformed, as the hero in a tale of ordeals is supposed to be, by his shape-shifting experiences as an Indian boy at Little Big Horn, an Indian tracker, a homeless Indian drunk, and a pilot in unnerving proximity to a Muslim terrorist. Alexies concentrated and mesmerizing novel of instructive confrontations is structured around provocative variations on the meanings and implications of flight as it asserts that people of all backgrounds are equally capable of good and evil. -- Donna Seaman (Reviewed 03-01-2007) (Booklist, vol 103, number 13, p37)

Click here for discussion questions and material

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

2008-04-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a decidedly non-heroic man who has become "unstuck in time." He travels back and forth in time, visiting his birth, death, all the moments in between repeatedly and out of order. The novel is framed by Chapters One and Ten, in which Vonnegut himself talks about the difficulties of writing the novel and the effects of Dresden on his own life. In between, Billy Pilgrim's life is given to us out of order and in small fragments.

From Contemporary Authors 49:
The main character, Billy Pilgrim, ... is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to be Lot's wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities of the plain in order to save them.'

Discussion questions:

To what extent is Billy Pilgrim a Christ figure?

What is the significance of the Tralfamadore narrative?

What role does Kilgore Trout play? Other secondary characters?

In what ways is this novel an anti-war narrative? Is it also anti-American in certain ways? How does the novel compare with other war narratives?

How is warfare presented in the novel? How, in particular, is the bombing of Dresden presented?
Where and why does Kurt Vonnegut insert himself into the text? Are we supposed to view this presence as the "real" Kurt Vonnegut? Does Kurt Vonnegut appear to sympathize with particular views and characters?

How does Vonnegut handle traditional narrative elements, such as time, plot, point of view, and characterization?

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

2008-04-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

from the book jacket:

In the midseventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away."

Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and orginality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times-the era free of love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Upis a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.

Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza

2008-03-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

Book Description
From one of the greatest rock guitarists of our era comes a memoir that redefines sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll
He was born in England but reared in L.A., surrounded by the leading artists of the day amidst the vibrant hotbed of music and culture that was the early seventies. Slash spent his adolescence on the streets of Hollywood, discovering drugs, drinking, rock music, and girls, all while achieving notable status as a BMX rider. But everything changed in his world the day he first held the beat-up one-string guitar his grandmother had discarded in a closet.
The instrument became his voice and it triggered a lifelong passion that made everything else irrelevant. As soon as he could string chords and a solo together, Slash wanted to be in a band and sought out friends with similar interests. His closest friend, Steven Adler, proved to be a conspirator for the long haul. As hairmetal bands exploded onto the L.A. scene and topped the charts, Slash sought his niche and a band that suited his raw and gritty sensibility.
He found salvation in the form of four young men of equal mind: Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, and Duff McKagan. Together they became Guns N' Roses, one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands of all time. Dirty, volatile, and as authentic as the streets that weaned them, they fought their way to the top with groundbreaking albums such as the iconic Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion I and II.
Here, for the first time ever, Slash tells the tale that has yet to be told from the inside: how the band came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart. This is a window onto the world of the notoriously private guitarist and a seat on the roller-coaster ride that was one of history's greatest rock 'n' roll machines, always on the edge of self-destruction, even at the pinnacle of its success. This is a candid recollection and reflection of Slash's friendships past and present, from easygoing Izzy to ever-steady Duff to wild-child Steven and complicated Axl.
It is also an intensely personal account of struggle and triumph: as Guns N' Roses journeyed to the top, Slash battled his demons, escaping the overwhelming reality with women, heroin, coke, crack, vodka, and whatever else came along.
He survived it all: lawsuits, rehab, riots, notoriety, debauchery, and destruction, and ultimately found his creative evolution. From Slash's Snakepit to his current band, the massively successful Velvet Revolver, Slash found an even keel by sticking to his guns.
Slash is everything the man, the myth, the legend, inspires: it's funny, honest, inspiring, jaw-dropping . . . and, in a word, excessive.

Sweet Serendipity: Delightful Desserts and Devilish Dish by Stephen Bruce

2008-02-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

Serendipity 3 is New York's legendary dessert restaurant and boutique. On it's 50th anniversary, this book was published to give the world an amazing but simple collection of dessert recipes enjoyed by anyone who has ever dined there. Treat yourself to a Strawberry Fields Sundae or a Frozen Hot Chocolate, a favorite of stars ranging from the Kennedy family to Cher! Let these desserts help you capture the heart of your sweetie this February.

Questions for discussion:

Have you ever been to Serendipity 3?

Have you tried any of the recipes from the book?

Street Logos by Tristan Manco

2007-12-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

Editorial review from The New Yorker:
Over the past decade, many graffiti artists have moved away from painting their signatures in the familiar wide-style lettering (a practice known as "tagging"). Instead, they leave—and make—their mark with pictograms that become personal trademarks. Thus, a Belgian artist known as Plug appends large, cartoon electric plugs to machines in public places, while Cha, an academy-trained painter, adorns the walls of Barcelona with Picasso-influenced cats. Manco's colorful survey of this D.I.Y. subculture spotlights some seventy artists working in the service of an impulse that is variously subversive, ironic, pop, celebratory, and dogmatic. In this medium, recognition is everything, and Manco's subjects are heavily influenced by the use of logos in advertising; the London artist Banksy terms his work "Brandalism." Exuberantly inventive, they enjoy responding to, and even altering, each other's work, to form what the New York-based artist Swoon calls a "community of actions." Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Edward S. Curtis by Hans Christian Adam

2007-12-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

From the Taschen Books website:

In search of lost time

For over thirty years, photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) traveled the length and breadth of North America, seeking to record in words and images the traditional life of its vanishing indigenous inhabitants. Like a man possessed, he strove to realize his life`s work, which culminated in the publication of his encyclopedia "The North American Indian." In the end, this monumental work comprised twenty textual volumes and twenty portfolios with over 2000 illustrations. No other photographer has created a larger oeuvre on this theme, and it is Curtis, more than any other, who has crucially molded our conception of Native Americans. This book shows the photographer`s most impressive pictures and vividly details his journey through life, which led him not only into the prairies but also into the film studios of Hollywood.

About the author:
Hans Christian Adam studied psychology, art history and communication studies in Göttingen and Vienna. As a specialist in historical pictorial material, he has published numerous articles and books, including titles on travel and war photography. He is the author of TASCHEN’s Edward Sheriff Curtis: The North American Indian, Karl Blossfeldt, Eugène Atget: Paris and Berlin.

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

2007-11-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Stolen Child is a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity.
Stolen from his family by changelings, Henry Day is given the name "Aniday" by the ageless magical beings, who replace him with another child who takes his place with his parents, a young boy who posesses an extraordinary gift of music.

About the author:
(from the Novelist book discussion guide)

Donohue had many childhood experiences in the forests and swamplands surrounding the tiny Maryland town where his family lived from the mid-1960s.
Donohue returned to his native Pittsburgh for college, earning a degree from Duquesne University in 1984. He was already a writer, paying his way through college with two creative writing grants. After graduating, he returned to the Washington, DC, area to take a job at the National Endowment for the Arts; his thirteen-year tenure there, as a speechwriter to three directors and as a Director of Publications, would coincide with the height of the culture wars. In his off hours, Donohue continued to write fiction, placing short stories in small journals, and pursued his doctorate, earning a Ph.D. in English from the Catholic University of America in 2002.

Questions for discussion:

What is the purpose of the pseudo-scientific discussion of fairies, hobgoblins, and changelings that opens the novel?

What does the novel seem to be saying about children and childhood?

What is the role of memory in The Stolen Child?

What do Aniday's writing, Henry Day's music, and Speck's map share?

How are Henry Day's and Aniday's lives linked?

How is Henry Day's childhood different from other children's?

Is The Stolen Child a "fairy tale for adults," as some reviewers have called it?

Did you like the book? What did you like or dislike about it most?

The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards

2007-10-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

In this collection of 14 stories set all over the globe, Edwards explores the lives of those who exist on the fringes of society. Among them are a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, Madame Curie's maid, a first-time sky diver, a trapeze artist, a rubber plant worker, an Englishwoman who has lived in the Third World for 30 years, and the daughter of a prominent anti-abortion protestor. Though their tales vary dramatically, each comes up against the barriers of place and circumstance in the most universal of experiences: the quest to discover and understand the elusive mysteries of love.

Questions for discussion:

Which story did you like the most and why was it your favorite?

Which story did you like the least? What didn't you like about it?

What did the characters in the stories have in common?

Have you read Kim Edwards' bestseller The Memory Keeper's Daughter?
If yes, how does the Secrets of a Fire King collection of stories compare to The Memory Keeper's Daughter?

Bust by Adam Resnick

2007-09-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

From the book cover:

On the surface, Adam Resnick was your typical guy next door, a dynamic young businessman, a devoted husband and father of two. But Adam spent nearly two decades as an obsessive gambler, chasing his habit from casino to casino, bookie to bookie, winning and losing millions, often in mere hours--until one day he received a phone call that was his moment of reckoning, and that marked his transition from lifelong addition to awareness and recovery. Bust is a true-life tale of a man whose gambling roller coaster finally stops and he has to winback millions in a day or lose everything.

Adam Resnick grew up in a typical middle-class Wisconsin household. From early childhood, he exhibited behavioral patterns that would later define and drive his gambling. Before his indictment in 2005, he had built a successful career as a health care entrepreneur. In January 2007, after pleading guilty to wire fraud, Resnick began a forty-two-month term in federal prison.

Questions for discussion:

What did you think about the book?

Do you think the book paints a realistic picture of the world of gambling?

Have you ever gone to a casino or gambled? How does it make you feel?

Have you ever known anyone with a gambling addiction or other addiction?

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

2007-08-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

A classic example of Latin American Science Fiction by Argentine fiction writer Casares.

From the book cover:

"The Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares is an urban comedian, a parodist who turns fantasy and science fiction inside out to expose the banality of our scientific, intellectual, and especially erotic pretensions. Bioy makes us laugh at our foibles with an affectionate yet elegant touch . . . . Behind his post-Kafka, pre-Woody Allen sense of nonsense is a metaphysical vision, particularly of life's brevity and the slippery terrian of love."
-- Suzanne Jill Levine

Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw. This fantastic exploration of virtual realities also bears comparison with the sharpest work of Philip K. Dick. It is both a story of suspense and bizarre romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to find such admirers as Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, this classic of Latin American literature also changed the history of film.

"The Invention of Morel may be described, without exaggeration, as a perfect novel . . . . Bioy Casares's theme is not cosmic, but metaphysical: the body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privileged perception, the most complete and total perception not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows."

-- Octavio Paz

About the Author:

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) was born in Buenos Aires, the child of wealthy parents. He began to write in the early Thirties, and his stories appeared in the influential magazine Sur, through which he met his wife, the painter and writer Silvina Ocampo, as well Jorge Luis Borges, who was to become his mentor, friend, and collaborator. In 1940, after writing several novice works, Bioy published the novella The Invention of Morel, the first of his books to satisfy him, and the first in which he hit his characteristic note of uncanny and unexpectedly harrowing humor. Later publications include stories and novels, among them A Plan for Escape, A Dream of Heroes, and Asleep in the Sun (forthcoming from NYRB Classics). Bioy also collaborated with Borges on the Anthology of Fantastic Literature and a series of satirical sketches written under the pseudonym of H. Bustos Domecq.

For a complete plot summary, character information, and themes please visit the Wikipedia The Invention of Morel page.

Discussion questions:

Who is Morel and what is his invention? Why has he invented this?

What are some of the different feelings experienced by the fugitive? What are the reasons for his feelings?

What do we learn from the fugitive's diary?

Have you ever kept a diary?

Teeth Under the Sun by Ignacio de Loyola Brandão

2007-07-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Teeth Under the Sun
Numéro July Book of the Month

Summary from the book cover
A modern-day Don Quixote and an exile in his own hometown, the protagonist of Teeth Under the Sun is kept from writing by a conspiracy (real? imagined?) designed to prevent him from revealing the truth about the town's strange status quo and violent past. In a place where people have abandoned their houses for tiny apartments inthe confines of new high-rises, the narrator walks the almost empty streets, remembering better times and meeting figures from his past: his ex-wife, his son, writers, friends, and revolutionaries. And all of this is interspersed with his memories of the movies. Fact and fiction, past and present, all meet in this story of the narrator's attempts to engage more fully with a modern world forcing him into isolation.

About the author
Ignacio de Loyola Brandão began his career writing film reviews and went on to work for one of the principal newspapers in São Paulo. Initially banned in Brazil, his novel Zero went on to win the prestigious Brasilia Prize and become a controversial best-seller. Brandão is the author of more than a half-dozen works of fiction, including Anonymous Celebrity and Angel of Death.

Questions for discussion:

How significant is the setting in this novel?

How does the time period affect the characters’ decisions?

How authentic is the culture or era represented in the book?

How did you feel about the characters? Who did you like or not like and why?

What are some feelings you had about one of the characters in the story? Their traits? Feelings? Attitudes?

Summary of The Metamorphosis and discussion questions

2007-06-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

First published in 1915, this is the story of Gregor Samsa, a young traveling salesman who lives with and financially supports his parents and younger sister. One morning he wakes up to discover that during the night he has been transformed into a "monstrous vermin" or insect. At first he is preoccupied with practical, everyday concerns: How to get out of bed and walk with his numerous legs? Can he still make it to the office on time?
Soon his abilities, tastes, and interests begin to change. No one can understand his insect-speech. He likes to scurry under the furniture and eat rotten scraps of food. Gregor's family, horrified that Gregor has become an enormous insect, keep him in his bedroom and refuse to interact with him. Only his sister Grete demonstrates concern by bringing his food each day.
When Gregor breaks out one day and scurries into the living room, his father throws apples to chase him away. One becomes embedded in his back. Eventually the apple becomes rotten and infected; Gregor wastes away. When he dies the cleaning woman throws his remains into the garbage.First published in 1915, this is the story of Gregor Samsa, a young traveling salesman who lives with and financially supports his parents and younger sister. One morning he wakes up to discover that during the night he has been transformed into a "monstrous vermin" or insect. At first he is preoccupied with practical, everyday concerns: How to get out of bed and walk with his numerous legs? Can he still make it to the office on time?
Soon his abilities, tastes, and interests begin to change. No one can understand his insect-speech. He likes to scurry under the furniture and eat rotten scraps of food. Gregor's family, horrified that Gregor has become an enormous insect, keep him in his bedroom and refuse to interact with him. Only his sister Grete demonstrates concern by bringing his food each day.
When Gregor breaks out one day and scurries into the living room, his father throws apples to chase him away. One becomes embedded in his back. Eventually the apple becomes rotten and infected; Gregor wastes away. When he dies the cleaning woman throws his remains into the garbage.

Questions for discussion

Do you have sympathy for Gregor? If so, why? If not, why not?

How does Gregor feel about his job? What evidence in the story reveals his feelings?

People changed into animals or animals turned into people is a common fairy tale theme. What ways is The Metamorphosis like fairy tales we know and in what ways is it different?

What is Gregor's family situation like?

2007-06-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

There will be a live audio and text discussion of The Metamorphosis on Wednesday, June 27th at 3:00 p.m CDT. It will take place at http://www.opal-online.org/ in the auditorium. Everyone welcome!

Time and place of future live chats and in-person discussions will be determined by the participants of the Numéro Book Club so please let me know which format works best for you. You can vote in the poll at the left or send an email to numerobookclub@gmail.com