… a Great Books weekend this way comes. Explore all manners of literary wickedness at the Great Books Foundation’s annual Chicago weekend, May 3 to 5, 2019. Book lovers from across North America will gather to discuss four readings that centre on the wickedness people contemplate and perpetrate: The Handmaid’s […]
Tag: Chicago
Great Books Chicago 2017: Her Own Accord
Gary Schoepfel, a longtime discussion leader at Classical Pursuits and program director at the Great Books Foundation, invites you to the foundation’s annual event, Great Books Chicago. This year’s theme Her Own Accord: Who we are and who we desire to be explores works by and about American women writers. We at […]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Reflections on Reading Chicago
We read. We saw. We heard. We tasted. Reading Chicago. READ While our some of Chicago’s most imaginative literary witnesses revealed its cultural contrasts, I was even more struck by a distinctive composite portrait of an astonishing city, characterized by muscular momentum, unpretentious pride and, sometimes, seamy realness. “City of […]
GUEST BLOG – Sean Forester on solitude and connection in the paintings at the Chicago Art Institute
The man on the left sits solitary. The bartender seems to be speaking, but no one responds (the woman looks at what she is holding in her hand, and the man seems to be lost in his own thoughts). Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks creates a powerful atmosphere, a feeling of melancholy. […]
GUEST BLOG – Gary Schoepfel welcomes you to his home field, Chicago.
For more than a decade, I have been globe trotting with Classical Pursuits. I’ve led book discussions on riverboats in Russia, Vietnam, and Cambodia; in cafes and restaurants in Paris, Greece, Quebec, and Santa Fe; in pastures, pubs, and B&Bs in England, Italy, Toronto, Ireland, and Key West. And although […]
TRAVEL + TORONTO PURSUITS 2013 – A sneak peek
Details are being firmed up. Check back often. TRAVEL PURSUITS – 2013 MARCH – Richmond Virginia, The Civil War (4 nights) We will explore this wrenching era in American history that pitted neighbour against neighbour and in some cases, brother against brother through some of the finest American writing that emerged […]