October 22: The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
November 12: The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker
December 10: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
Anna DiMartino
Tuesdays, 4–5:30 PM
October 22, November 12 & December 10
Melissa & Max Elliott North Reading Room
$10/15 for each session
Are you an avid reader or would you simply like to read more? Would you like to read more thoughtfully? Are you intellectually curious and longing to be with a group of like-minded folks?
Join us for lively and thought-provoking discussion on award-winning (or nominated) literature, primarily fiction.
Wine and snacks provided.
October 22: The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
A true-to-life novel of one of the few female post-Renaissance painters to achieve fame during her own era against great struggle. Artemisia Gentileschi led a remarkably "modern" life. Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame as an artist. Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Naples, inhabited by historical characters such as Galileo and Cosimo de' Medici II, and filled with rich details about life as a seventeenth-century painter, Vreeland creates an inspiring story about one woman's lifelong struggle to reconcile career and family, passion and genius.
November 12: The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker
The highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her “slyly subversive” (EW) cult-hit Dietland—a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up.
Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.
December 10: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
#1 Book of the Year from Brain Pickings
Named a best book of the year by NPR, Newsweek, Slate, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Elle, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub.
A dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism on the subject of loneliness, told through the lives of iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring.
When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by the most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving from Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks to Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, from Henry Darger’s hoarding to David Wojnarowicz’s AIDS activism, Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.
Immediately after you register, look for a confirmation email and receipt. In the week preceding the class start date, you will receive another email with more details.
These classes will be held in compliance with State of California and County of San Diego health regulations as applicable at the time of each class. The safety of our students, faculty, and staff continues to be our highest priority.