Brona’s Salon

Topic:  re-reading a book  comments for  Brona’s Salon

1. I will have to think long and hard to remember a book  I re-read.
2. There is something in me that keeps whispering:
3. ‘…you’re wasting your time …there so many new books waiting for you!”
4. A few books I did re-read you could count them on one hand.
5. The Scarlet Letter (N. Hawthorne) is one of them.
6. This book has a special place in my memory.
7. Girls get into mischief and
8. …so did I while attending  an all girl Catholic School.
9. The class studied The Scarlet Letter with Sister Euphemia.
10. We all thought she was older than God!
11. The girls secretly taped a Scarlet Letter to the front of her desk.
12. Clueless, Sister Euphemia continued to teach us about
13. one of the first great heroines of American fiction, Hester Prynne.
14. As you can guess, not one of us could keep ‘a straight face’.
15. Looking back I realize how precious those years were when we learned and laughed together.
16. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book.
17. It had the quality of writing  equal to that of  Emile  Zola.
18. If you need a ‘classic’ for your reading list….I strongly recommend this on!

Questons:

What are you currently reading?  (….not re-reading)

• I’m reading a play Gem of the Ocean 
• by the African American playwright August Wilson.

What are your first impressions?

1. I love to read plays but never really learned ‘how’ to read them.
2. We all struggle through Shakespeare  with its language and allusions
3. …but  we forget that  modern plays have so much to offer us.
4. I’m starting slowly learning more about A. Wilson the man.
5. He wrote a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle
6. …for which he received two  Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.
7. Gem of the Ocean is the first play in the series.
8. Each play is set in a different decade
9. …and aims to sketch the Black experience in the 20th century.
10. I then want to answer some questions….
11. What is the  context in which it is written?
    When and where was the play first performed?
    What comments have been publicized about the play?
    What is the setting for the play?
    Is there a dedication at the beginning of the play?  To whom? Why?
12. All this research….before I even open the book!
13. I’m not rushing through a play as a quick blogpost
14. …but really immersing myself into
15. …the art of the theater, especially the writing of plays. (dramaturgy)
16. What was the last play you read?

August Wilson (1945)