TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Hickam, Dos Passos and Dostoyevsky featured in Tom Peters’ forthcoming chatcasts

By David Rothman

Homer Hickam’s Sky of Stone, John Dos Passos’s The 42nd Parallel and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov will be featured in Tom Peters’ next chatcasts for Online Programming for All Libraries and the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center.

Sky will be discussed Nov. 22, with The 42nd Parallel set for Dec. 20 and the Brothers K for Jan. 31. As noted those are audiochats, though you can ask questions by typing, not just with voice. Go here to log in and get the software, which is spyware-free. Pictured is Homer Hickam, author of Sky and also the topic of a recent TeleRead post.

Coming in December–date not yet set–may be a discussion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 led by Bradbury expert Loren Logsdon, an English professor from Eureka College in Illinois. Bradbury was born in Waukegan.

Meanwhile here are the full details from Tom directly about the Hickam, Dos Passos and Dostoyevsky chatcasts:

–Monday, November 22, 2005 beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 7:00 Central, 6:00 Mountain, 5:00 Pacific, and Midnight GMT:
Book Discussion of the memoir Sky of Stone, by Homer Hickam
The third volume of Hickam’s memoirs following Rocket Boys (RC 47833) and The Coalwood Way (RC 52009). Recounts what he learned about love and labor unions during his first summer working in the West Virginia coal mines in 1961, after his freshman year in engineering school.
NLS audiobook version: RC 54699(3 cassettes; read by John Polk)
This OPAL public event will be held in the Atrium.

–Tuesday, December 20, 2005 beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 7:00 Central, 6:00 Mountain, 5:00 Pacific, and Midnight GMT:
Book Discussion of the 1930 novel, The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos
The first novel in the U.S.A. trilogy. Quoting from the Oxford Companion to American Literature (5th ed.), “These novels, which tell the story of the first three decades of the 20th century in the U.S., have as their protagonist the social background of the nation, and as their major theme the vitiation and degradation of character in a decaying civilization based on commercialism and exploitation. The trilogy employs several distinctive fictional devices.”
NLS audiobook version: RC 42698 (9 cassettes, but we will be discussion on the first novel; read by Bill Wallace)

This OPAL public event will be held in the Atrium.

–Tuesday, January 31, 2006 beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 7:00 Central, 6:00 Mountain, 5:00 Pacific, and Midnight GMT:
Book Discussion of the 1880 Russian novel, The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The melodramatic tale of Fyodor Karamazov and his sons: Alyosha, Dmitri, Ivan, and the illegitimate Smerdyakov. The death of the father and conflicts of faith are key themes in this panorama of nineteenth-century Russia. Acclaimed 1990 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
NLS audiobook version: RC 50370 (8 cassettes; read by Ken Kliban)
This OPAL public event will be held in the Atrium.

The URL for updated schedules and links into the online room is:

http://www.opal-online.org/progsbooks.htm