Great Books Discussion Group - Beavercreek Library

The Great Books Discussion Group at the Beavercreek Library was started 30+ years ago and is still going strong. Discussion materials are published by The Great Books Foundation, Chicago, Illinois and cost about $25 to $30 each year for each participant. Books may be ordered by phone from the Great Books Foundation, 1 800-222-5870 or online at http://www.greatbooks.org.

The method of discussion, "shared inquiry", requires that in order to participate in the discussion, the member must have read the entire article and must restrict the comments to the article itself, not on previous readings or personal experiences. The fact that the members have been "talking" for thirty years emphasizes the members' enjoyment of the great conversations.

When & Where

The Great Books Discussion Group meets the first and third Tuesday each month in the Beavercreek library community room starting in September and running through May.

For additional information, please contact Laura Pinney at (937) 426-2559.

Upcoming Discussions



This year the group has selected "Conversations 3", a book containing both articles and fiction including such authors as Chaucer, Hume, Tolstoy, and Pirandello.

Conversations 3

Table of contents:

The Open Boat
Stephen Crane
Death in the Woods
Sherwood Anderson
The Garden of Forking Paths
Jorge Luis Borges
Introduction to The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
An Interest In Life
Grace Paley
Selected Poems
Wislawa Szymborska
Excerpt from Discipline and Punish
Michel Foucault
Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri
The Pardoner's Tale
Geoffrey Chaucer
A Defence of Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Excerpts from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
The Unknown Masterpiece
Honoré de Balzac
Second Epilogue to War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
The Man Who Would Be King
Rudyard Kipling
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello