Story Telling

From the earliest days of mankind, stories have been shared between individuals and groups.  Many started as a way to explain an event or teach a lesson.  But over time, story tellers added pictures, sound, and music to increase the suspense, drama, and humor.  Story telling became a way of life with wandering minstrels bringing tales of far away places as they sang their stories to eager audiences.  Then, they were replaced by the printed page.  Books and short stories fed the search for knowledge of foreign lands, adventure, romance, and much more.  These stories moved on to be presented in movies, television, and video games.  We’ve come a long way from small group story telling around a fire. 

However, unlike the minstrel, books never went away.  They may have gone from paper to electronic – but they are still with us.  As part of the learning in retirement organization, Omnilore, that I participate in with many others of a similar mind set, books are very important.  We use them as discussion texts in our Study/Discussion Groups and we share titles, reviews, and suggestions in our conversations whenever we get together.   There are many members with wide ranging interests who are also voracious readers willing to offer a new book title for consideration.

With my friend, Patricia, we started a Best Sellers Discussion as a Special Interest Group (SIG) to give us an opportunity to join with others who like to talk about a common book that we have all read.  This started in June and covered one book per month as we split the selections between fiction and non-fiction.   These have not all been books I would have automatically chosen to read.  However, the nudge to read and discuss them was all I needed. 

 

 

In their own way, each of these has been interesting and thought provoking.   On the second Monday of the month for an hour and one-half between 24 and 32 of us met and sat in a circle to discuss THE BOOK under review.  This isn’t quite like our ancient ancestors around a fire, but the enthusiasm and undivided attention given as everyone spoke about the book is no doubt similar.

As we finished our first trimester coordinating this SIG and started planning the second trimester of new books to discuss in the next four months, I feel much the same way I did when it was time to start the new school year….excited and optimistic for what’s ahead.