Get Your Read On With Bixby Knolls

I really need to make my way down to Bixby Knolls Literary Society Meetings because I'm a low key book worm. By that I mean one month I won't read one book and the next, I'll read three. All the King's Men is a book I've been recommended to read in the past but never got around to it. I should give it a try. Wouldn't it be cool if us CityLifers go to this meeting? It would let us meet face to face and tune up our reading as well.

Let's do this! Here is the information:

February, 2010 Selection:

All the King's Men
by
Robert Penn Warren

Next Society Meeting:
Wednesday, February 10, 2009, 7:00pm

Expo
4321 Atlantic Avenue

Parking available along Atlantic and on Burlinghall
Refreshments will be provided

All the King's Men, first published in 1946, won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, and the movie version won the Academy Award in 1949 as best picture.

It has been rated the 36th greatest novel of the 20th century by Modern Library. The novel's title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty.

The book has been said to be based on the life of Huey Long (1893-1935), the colorful Louisiana governor and senator.

"All the King's Men portrays the dramatic political ascent and governorship of Willie Stark, a driven, cynical populist in the American South during the 1930s. The novel is narrated by Jack Burden, a political reporter who comes to work as Governor Stark's right-hand man. The trajectory of Stark's career is interwoven with Jack Burden's life story and philosophical reflections:

'the story of Willie Stark and the story of Jack Burden are, in one sense, one story.'"

Warren claimed that All The King's Men was "never intended to be a book about politics." Keep that in mind as you read it.