Second Saturday Book Group
Meets next on April’s FIFTH Saturday!
Selection: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Date: Saturday, April 29, 2023 Time: 10:00 am – 12:00+
First published: 1989 Meeting Place: On ZOOM only!
Discussion leader: Dorie Maxwell doriemaxwell@mac.com.
To join us on Zoom, please use the “Attend Other Meetings on Zoom” button on the 1stUUPB web page 1stUUPB.org.
After 1stUUPB chose to go in search of new minister this year, our book group chose to travel a parallel path through the year following the theme “A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning” — the UUA’s Fourth Principle. And now while we congregants eagerly await to know the identity of our new minister, now that our search committee and board have completed their search, our book group invites you to join us as we complete our season by reading The Remains of the Day, written by Kazoo Ishiguro.
Wikipedia tells us, “The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro. The protagonist, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a stately home near Oxford, England. In 1956, he takes a road trip to visit a former colleague, and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.” Through this journey, Stevens searches his memories of his pre-WWII days for confirmation of the dignity of his life and reaches some uncomfortable conclusions.
Following our read of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in December, this is the second British classic we’re reading this year, honoring the death last fall of Queen Elizabeth II. During her reign the world saw the demise of the British Empire, considered to have been the largest empire ever. We included these British classics this year has been to remind us that, what ever we think of colonialism, wherever in the world the British Empire went, so went the English language, and this spread British literature around the globe.
As always, members and friends are welcome to join this Zoom discussion— whether you’ve finished the book or not. And after our discussion anyone who’s in town is welcome to meet up at Brio’s Italian Grill in the Gardens Mall for lunch and fellowship.
We regret that this closure of our 2022-2023 season mixes things up by moving away from our usual second Saturday meetings, but we found that our scheduled date was on Easter weekend, and quite a few of our regular participants had conflicts on that day. Our search for a better time with the fewest conflicts took us clear to the last Saturday on April —the 29th. And by then several seasonal members will have left town. Thus we’ve switched from in-person to Zoom.
Want to plan ahead for our 2023-2024 season? Stay alert to our our UU Matters in the late summer, and our new Second Saturday Book Group steering committee will be posting that season’s readings. Members of that committee now are Steve Pock, Chair, plus Lauren Furst, Nancy Stone, and Dorie Maxwell. If you would like to have your name added to the list of our regular members so you can receive periodic emails, contact Steve at srpock@mac.com.