a girl on a bench

hi all! & welcome as we lead up to our second meet of the year for Los Angeles Ghosts Book Club Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 from 7:00 – 8:00 PM (PST) 🙂

we will be discussing October’s book of the month – the infamous Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein.

meeting link: LAGC – October Collective – Thursday, November 2 · 7:00 – 8:00pm
(https://meet.google.com/cgg-hmgm-pep)

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discussion topics:

• What role does ambition play in the lives of characters other than Victor? Is it mirrored? Refuted? What does the book as a whole have to say about it. Is it a coherent thesis, or fractured?
• Victor explicitly fears the creation of a female monster in Chapter 3. He assigns worries to it’s hypothetical existence separate from those concerning the existing monster. Why do you think that is? Where else does Shelley explicitly comment on a female experience?
• Is the monster always telling the truth? Is Walton? Is Victor?
• Why do you believe Shelley chose to bookend the novel with letters from Walton?
• Trite as this question is, it simply must be asked: Who is the real monster in Frankenstein?

notable quotes:

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be his world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” (pg.54)

“A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.” (pg.55)

“Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now, that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter loathing and despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone, while my feelings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” (pg.223)

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please be prepared to vote on November’s book at this meeting 🥰 if you’d like to put a book up for vote, feel free to submit options here —

suggest a book for our next read:

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