“There are all these books I haven't read yet, even if I am simultaneously reading at least twenty…” Each month, The Edward Gorey House Book Club meets — at the House and in an online setting — to discuss some of Gorey’s favorite authors and his literary influences. Attendance is limited to 20 bookish sorts per group for optimal quarreling. Included with your ticket is an exclusive Books, Please! bookmark and EGH bookplate. Meetings consist of one hour of merry (and guided) discussion. All we ask is that you read enough of the book to have fun – or fake it well enough that we can’t tell the difference. The Last Wednesday of each month. Online: 4:15-5:15 • In-Person: 5:30-6:30 In-Person Tickets → Online Tickets → The Brewster Book Store is generously offering a 10% discount on each month’s book to Club members. You may take advantage of this at their lovely store in Brewster (with the presentation of your Club ticket). Books are also available through their virtual storefront. Upcoming Recommendations de la Bibliotheque Gorey: The Green Child, Herbert Read | April 29 “I expect it will always stick in my mind, even haunt me rather.” The only novel ever finished by English anarchist and poet Herbert Read, The Green Child is an inscrutable three-part tale of a village in England, the death of a dictator, and mysterious green people (based on the 12th century green children of Woolpit). Political, ironic, and deeply strange, casual readers and scholars alike can come to no conclusion as to what to do with it. T.S. Eliot – Read’s friend and frequent critic – praised it as one of the best pieces of English prose of the 20th century. Kerri B. on Goodreads argues that it “started off soooo good!!! and then flop flop flop!!” Whose camp will you fall into? Most likely neither. New Poems, Rainer Maria Rilke | May 27 Rainer Maria Rilke was a wanderer, an innovator, an occasional mystic, and one of the most significant poets of the early 20th century. His 1907 collection New Poems is a shift in perspective away from the ethereal musings of his earlier work and towards the analytical observation of the Dinggedicht, or thing-poem. Edward, gently pushed towards Rilke by his friend and collaborator Peter Neumeyer, reflected that “the more doom-and-gloom strike all too many chords in my tiny head, and I get overcome [...] It is probably fortunate I did not read him when I was seventeen, or I might have never survived into my twenties.” Please note that the House is not responsible for emotional damage incurred by reading poetry for Books, Please! Orlando, Virginia Woolf | June 24 A powerful modernist novel about gender (or possibly about something else entirely), Orlando chronicles the life of an ageless young man who, about halfway through the book, wakes up as a woman. Is it a piece of experimental historiography? Is it an ode to the literary history of England? Is it a strange, extended love letter to Vita Sackville-West? Is it any good at a...
The home of Edward Gorey in Yarmouth Port, MA. It was named The Elephant House by Edward and we continue to call it such.
