Hello friends!
First up, we will read Mrs Dalloway because it’s always good to start with a writer’s more famous works. Plenty of time to explore the backlots later. Mrs Dalloway takes place on a single day in June so it seems appropriate to read this book during June. Feel free to try reading the whole thing in a single day if you feel like a challenge. Here’s what I’m proposing:
May
Source a copy of Mrs Dalloway. Get a few friends on board if your friends are the sort of people that go in for this sort of thing.
Still May
Put the book on your bedside table. Admire the lovely cover. Read the blurb. Work up some enthusiasm. Read the first page. Keep going if you like.
May is taking a while
Continue to work up your enthusiasm. Watch the trailer for The Hours on YouTube and wonder if it has stood the test of time. Twenty years ago it seemed so highbrow!
7 June
Read the first twenty pages of Mrs Dalloway (there are no chapter markings so this time around we will just do our best with vague divisions). I will put up a post and you can add your first impressions to the comments.
14 June
Read to halfway. (I think this is about where there is a line break and the next paragraph begins with – ‘It was precisely twelve o’clock; twelve by Big Ben…’ So stop at the line break. In other words, stop after the scene between Septimus and Holmes.) I will post, summarising where we’ve got to and making some observations and you can add your comments.
20 June
Summer / Winter solstice – mark in the usual way.
28 June
Read to the end. I will post, summarising key moments in the second half and making some observations and you can add your comments.
If people are enjoying themselves and there is any sort of momentum, we will do To the Lighthouse next and I will circulate another reading schedule closer to then.
Fun! I've been meaning to read Woolf forever.. and have not yet. Happy to jump in here!
I’m in. Been meaning to read my copy 😊 different versions should be an interesting wrinkle for a book without divisions!