Embedded Files
Welcome to the website for the OLLI novels course, fall 2021. We will continue to use this site throughout the fall and I will post resources, books lists, further information, links, and the class PowerPoint slides on this site. But pack your patience, as well as your books. This site is new software that I haven't used before. Google has retired the old "classic" sites that I'm so familiar with, and replaced it with this supposedly "new and improved" model, although I might beg to differ with that.
In addition to the books we will read and discuss, I'm already preparing a "What to Read Next" list because there are so many books worthy of note that we won't be able to get to. Please check the Schedule page as well, because I am going to talk about several novels that we won't read, but that I am assuming you are familiar with. The numbers at the end of the title line refer to page count.
Down South
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier (366 pps)
Okay, I succumbed--to the prose style. Many of you may have read this novel when originally published in 1997, as I did, and when it won the US National Book Award for Fiction. But then I started to re-read, and read also his novel about the West, Thirteen Moons, which I was considering for that portion of this fall's course. His prose is utterly luscious, and so I swooned and sighed--and succumbed. Just the opening chapter of Thirteen Moons sold me. So if you get a chance, read that as well. But for this course, we will read and discuss Cold Mountain, a Civil War era saga, about the South--but about much more than that as well. By the way, they made a movie of this novel (of course), starring Jude Law and available on Amazon Prime. You can watch that--after--you read or re-read the book.
One more book, or assortment of short stories--choice decided by members of the class. The class decided, and I agree. It's:
A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner
Here's the list we picked from:
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
Women writers:
Flannery O'Connor, primarily short stories, any, and all
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, sexually liberated for those days
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter, won a Pulitzer.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (595 pps)
The word "epic" in the subtitle of this novel is entirely appropriate; it tells the great untold stories of black citizens who fled the south and moved north, as well as west, in search of a better life. In keeping with the theme of this course, it is another migration. Not only is this book a New York Times bestseller, but the author is also a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Out West
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, by David McCullough (353 pps)
As many of you know, David McCullough is a well known and respected writer of historical novels, based on the facts of history rather than the myths, something that our understanding of the American west has been influenced by. Using letters, diaries, and other printed materials, McCullough provides the dramatic, the personalities, and the motivations that drove these early American settlers. On a personal note, my ancestry dates back to some of these early pioneers.
My Antonia, by Willa Cather (161 pps)
This novel is the first of Cather's Prairie Trilogy, which includes The Song of the Lark and O Pioneers, a classic that consistently appears on multiple lists of America's best books and authors.
The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (pps)
Erdrich, one of the most widely acclaimed writers of the Native American Renaissance in literature, is a member of the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa Indians.
On Wed. Nov. 10, she will be interviewed as part of the Seattle Arts and Lecture series (https://lectures.org/events/). That's the same series that featured an interview with Tana French, by Ruth Ware. Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See, will be interviewed on Sept. 28.
Partner in Crime, by J. A. (Judith Ann) Jance (400 pps)
For readers who enjoy the traditional mystery novel, this book partners two of Jance's detectives, J. P. Beaumont, a Seattle PD Detective, and Joanna Brady, an Arizona County Sheriff, in the same story. Jance has a third series featuring former Los Angeles news anchor turned mystery solver, Ali Reynolds. And Jance is a prolific writer. So, if you haven't read before, here's your introduction to two of her crime solvers, and you can pick the one you'd like to follow further.
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Previous Course Websites:
I have conducted lecture and discussion courses on novels--in various genres--for a couple of years now. If you would like to check out the books and topics we have discussed in these courses, please click on the links below:
Website for Spring 2022 course: A Novelty of Novels
Mysteries and Histories: Again
Overdue Books: Selected Samples
Art Mysteries and Masterpieces
Dear Reader: Epistolary Novels
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