You undoubtedly have a mental picture of a “mad scientist.” If you visited a costume shop and saw that label on a package, you could predict the contents: likely a white lab coat, a bushy fright wig, some thick-framed eyeglasses or goggles, and some test tubes or other instruments. We […]
[Editor’s note: Longtime Toronto Pursuits leader Nancy Carr returns in 2019 with a seminar on the unforgettable Middlemarch. The seminar is already half full; register today!] Middlemarch is the one book I’m willing to tell people they should read. I recommend many books, and advocate strongly for a few. But […]
Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, is one of his most complex and ambitious works. It includes everything you’d expect from Dickens—a huge cast of characters, a convoluted plot, extremes of emotion, and a vivid depiction of life in Victorian London. (Did you know, for instance, that private “dustmen” […]
Henry James took novels seriously. He believed that a good novel gave us unique access to depths of experience, and enabled us to explore how individuals work out their destinies in specific times and places. This seriousness of purpose has irritated more than one reader of James’ work. Most famously, […]
It seems I was barely back from India before I was heading back to the airport en route to Savannah to discuss Flannery O’Connor – for the fourth time. You might think that this would be a rather hum drum same old, same old experience for discussion leader Nancy Carr […]
Andrew Smith is retired from a career in financial services. He had never studied literature or been in a book club when he first showed up at Toronto Pursuits in July 2007. He has become a regular. From his home in Toronto, Andrew reflects on why he decided to give it a […]
I was sent this article by my assistant, Eva Elo, who, like Virginia Woolf, is a knitter. It comes from an online knitting magazine, Knitting Daily. I pass it along to all those who are knitters and/or fans of Virginia Woolf. It now seems natural that Woolf, who was always […]