The Author

José de Sousa Saramago, (born November 16, 1922) is a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor rather than the officially sanctioned story. Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. He founded the National Front for the Defense of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães among others. He currently lives on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain.

The Book

Blindness (Portuguese: Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning Essay on Blindness) is a novel by Portuguese author José Saramago. It was published in Portuguese in 1995 and in English in 1997. It is one of his most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda.

The premise is this: over the course of a few weeks, everyone in the country is suddenly and inexplicably struck with a case of white blindness. Only one individual in the whole country -- the wife of the opthalmologist who examined the first man to go blind and who was subsequently one of the earliest people to go blind himself -- is spared. She and her husband are quarantined in an abandoned mental asylum along with the others who are first struck by the white blindness. The rest of the book follows the story of her, her husband, and the other individuals who settle in their ward.

Our Discussion

It's a hard book.

It started with everyone's impressions on this book and the discusion was quite casually. We have inadvertently come across quetions like:

(a)Do you think the white sickness is really caused by a highly contagious disease? What other possible explanations might there be for the blindness experienced by nearly all of the characters in the novel?

(b)Did the ministry of health act in good faith when it established a forcible quarantine of those afflicted, or suspected of being contaminated, with the white sickness?

(c)Consider life inside the mental hospital. What aspect of that existence would you find the most troubling?

(d)If you were a woman in the mental facility, would you have consented to be raped in exchange for food?

(e)Upon several occasions, the inmates of the mental hospital considered using collective action to better their circumstances. Yet, they never effectively organized. At what points in the narrative do you think that collective action could have made a significant difference?

There's something more, and it's the writing style. Saramago used only commas and periods to punctuate his sentences. That means no hyphens, no semicolons - and no quotation marks, either. Speech runs on in a sprawling mess by separating each statement with a comma and a capital, which we thought as a teacher once said a special writing stle in modern literature. Also none of the characters are named, either, merely referred to by their position - the first man, the doctor's wife, the man with the black eye-patch, and so on - and the combination of the two is intensely claustrophobic. You never quite feel you can see what's going on, you feel that your viewpoint is constrained - in fact, you feel partially blind.

In places, the novel is bleak, and brutal; in places, as you might expect from a novel employing a metaphor of such grand power and conception, it is genuinely enlightening.

Besides I have found several reviews online to share with:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/09/044458.php

http://bookreviewsforrealpeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/blindness-jos-saramago.html

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/saramago-blindness.html

Celia, Lily, Lindsay, Nelly and Tiffany attended the discussion. Sorry that this round of discussion has been delayed for several times.

-Tiffany-

 This is a dark book as all of us "suffered", and it is about humanity. I would compare it with "the Plague" and "the lord of flies".Yeah, they are of the same genre. I love this book. I have to say so because it keeps me thinking and gets me inspired; but I agree we can not read dark books continuously. (hey, relieved, the next one will be sweet)

 There are some moments which surprised me: the doctor's wife pretended to be blind and went with her husband; the doctor's wife agreed on sacrificing sexually for food (as I thought they would not be obedient); the doctor's wife turned blind in the end. 

 About today's book discussion:

 This is the most "free-style" one for me because we dicussed quite freely and had no stress at all.  Tiffany is great~I know being a leader for this dark book is not easy indeed.

About our book club:

The recording part will be neccessary, and it's not only a matter for the book discussion leader.

Every one of us should write some free comments after the discussion and feelings while reading as well.

I'll try to create a Google Group after we decide on the next book and the next leader to record personal comments, thoughts while reading, and inspiring sentences. (it will be messy if every one writes an article here, google group is nicer^^)

 Waiting for Tiffany to post! and wait for the next book!

-posted by Lindsay

Writer: Alan Lightman

Publisher: Vintage Books

About the writer:

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1948. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams.

From an early age, he was interested in both science and the art. While in high school, began independent science projects and writing poetry. His unusual combination of talents in both science and creative writing drew attention as he won city and state-wide science fairs as well as the state-wide competition for the National Council of Teachers of English award. He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in science and humanity.

About the book:

Ok, here we have the booklist:

              The book consists of 33 short stories recounted in the moon's view. These stories are quite different from those fairy tales we are familiar with. On the contrary, they are realistically written and is fraught with humanity.

Brittany:    <雾都孤儿>

Peter:       <the dogs of babel> (don’t have one)

 Lily:        < Brave New World > Aldous Huxley 

Veronica:    <sex and the city>

Tiffany:     <The great Gatsby>

Laura：     to Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

                Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

                The 1st Women's Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

                Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

finally

we choose Blindness.

     Tiffany

Author: Kid, Sue Monk.
Publisher: New York: Penguin, 2003，

book discussion leader: Lindasy

About the book: 　Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

My favourite site: http://weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees/   

This is a website which is made by a class in the US. They were also reading "the secret life of bees“ and this is a forum for them to discuss and record their feelings. What is the most interesting part of it is that they also draw some pictures of the book.  Please Enjoy!

My feeling of this book discussion:

 I remember that I stayed up till 2 o'clock the night before the final discussion, sorting through the questions you gave me and the huge amount of information. Because this is the first time that Miss Tang asked us to lead the book discussion, I got no role models. Actually we didn't finish all the questions, and I still have them. Maybe I can type those out. 

I really love this book, with the soft tone and beautiful language. The story really kept me thinking, about what really lies there in Lily's heart. Is the boundry between Black and White really inevitable? How much did women suffer to raise their voices in a society governed by patriarchy?

WIll update this post later.

 ----posted by Lindsay

       I just keep this name as a temporary one, so every one---Start thinking!

 PS: I'll delete this post after we come up with an awesome name.

----posted by Lindsay

1.       This blog is for us to record and discuss.

      If you feel that the 3 hours’ discussion is not enough, you can certainly write down your thoughts. Or if you come up with interesting questions while you are reading or eagerly want to talk before the final discussion, then don’t hesitate to write them down.

      It is also a platform for those who fail to show up to follow up and write down their thoughts. And eachtime we need to take a picture and put it on the blog. It is also predictable that people will leave later, and with this, we can be updated and stay with our book club.

2.       After we choose a book, it will be the Leader’s responsibility to start a post as a while-reading discussion forum; and after each discussion, the leader should attach the picture and write a conclusion of the book discussion, or more if one wants. So Tiffany please start the post after we agree on the next book!

3.       This blog will be English, despite my first post as a poor start…

4.       Please tell me if you have any suggestion related to the blog, maybe I have made some grammer mistakes~ha

      you can answer on this post or email me. and I'll make an update of this post as our rules. 

      This blog is just a start, we'll make it more mature later.

5.       It’ll be our responsibility to take care of the blog, just as we have been taking care of our book club^^

6.   I hope each time the title will be in the same form, so we can make the blog neat.

7.   every time you make a post, don't forget to add your name in the end. or we'll all be" bookclub".

8.       And There is a task for the us Class 1 A students to do: that is to record the books we have read, it won’t be a big task!

As far as I remember, we have:

Stuart Little

The alchemist

A girl with a pearl earing

The secret life of bees---Lindsay

Outsider-------------------Colette

Siddhartha ----------------Lily

Einstein’s dreams--------Nelly( you can start on editing my post )

.........-----------------------Tiffany

and can we do as follows?

Stuart Little-------------Peter

The alchemist------------Yolanda

A girl with a pearl earing---Celia  

 Please add the books I forget,

And if there are other books, B&V should make it~ Thx guys!!!

Please include these:

1)      a picture of the book

2)      the things you have remembered about our discussion at that moment

3)      any more you can think of

I’ll try to put them in order after we all finish.

Peter can I put you as the web-manager of our book club? I can not think of anyone better than you^^ 

Problems now for peter:

  1）如何让创作这名字不是bookclub.每次最后写signature太麻烦

  2) 博客名字的字体

-----posted by Lindsay

 PS:

I'm sorry I put it in Chinese, Please use English~

---posted by Lindsay

Kent Haruf's Plainsong;

Hermann's Siddhartha;

Charles's the feast of love;

Tara Road.

----and we chose  "Siddhartha"

--posted by Lindsay

Tony&Guo

Tom, Laura, Jennifer

----

Peter

Tiffany 

Colette 

Lily

Lindsay

Yolanda

Nelly

Brittany

Veronica

Celia

Jenny 

---posted by Lindsay