Hello friends!
Tomorrow is the official start of our group-read of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
In light of that, I’ve recorded a conversation with my friend
to introduce the novel to new readers. Nancy is an experienced teacher of literature — currently she teaches at a community college in Olympia, Washington. She has a longstanding interest in Virginia Woolf (having written her graduate thesis on Woolf) and I am grateful for her participation!Lighthouse toolkit
A few things to help you on your way:
READING SCHEDULE: Our reading schedule is here.
ALL RELEVANT POSTS: I will be putting all To the Lighthouse posts and podcasts here. If you miss something, this is where you will find it.
TOMORROW: I will send out a post offering a close look at the first page or two of the novel to kick things off.
ONE WEEK HENCE: I will share a conversation about Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, and his fictional avatar, Mr Ramsay (which I recorded with Nancy Miller and
).FEELING DISCOURAGED? If you’re new to Woolf and find her writing dense or challenging, hang in there! If it’s any consolation, I had an unpromising start with Woolf’s writing. And now look at me! I brim with (misplaced) confidence and never shut-up about Woolf. You too can become a terrible bore on first dates and family picnics! Just keep reading.
CONSUMABLES: Cups of tea, sandwiches, notebooks and studious facial expressions are the reader’s own responsibility.
A few notes on my conversation with Nancy
In our conversation, Nancy and I refer to To the Lighthouse having little or no plot. That is not quite accurate — of course in conversation, for reasons of expediency, we opted not to add caveats and qualifications to every sentence. But to add a qualification post-hoc: it is not that the novel has no plot — it does. It’s just that it does not follow a traditional plot arc and, at times, the characters’ streams of consciousness partly shroud the action of the novel in a way that might feel confusing or disorientating for first-time readers.
(Can I also say that early on in the conversation I use the word ‘segue’ a few times when I think I meant ‘digression’ or ‘detour.’ Sorry if that was confusing. And at the 6:50 minute mark, the word I’m saying is ‘characters’ not ‘cactus.’ Haha.)
I hope to bring you a couple of other conversations with Nancy during our reading of the novel, though there will be written posts as well — it’s entirely up to you whether you listen to our recorded conversations or not. They are an optional extra!
Until tomorrow, when we officially start reading!
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