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 Welcome to the Acorn Book Circle Program Website!
Acorn (A Chance to Read in Company) is an annual circle of campus and community book groups, sponsored by the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. This program is designed to bring together readers from on and off campus, to read and share perspectives on a great work of literature chosen each year by program participants.
After dancing with Jane Austen, drinking with Dashiell Hammett,
and quilting with Margaret Atwood, we are taking a break. To
put it more prosaically, we are short of funds and short of
staff. We do hope to continue this program in some form, and
will keep you posted via e-mail. Meanwhile, if you have
questions or suggestions, please contact Professor Michael
Williams, Chair of the UWSP English Department (715-346-4928 or
m2willia@uwsp.edu).
The featured book for 2010 was Alias
Grace, by acclaimed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.
In this novel, Atwood retells the story of Grace Marks, a
real-life mid-nineteenth-century Irish servant-turned murder
convict-turned asylum inmate in Toronto, and an American doctor
who tries to find out whether she is guilty of the crime.
Professor Tomoko Kuribayashi, a distinguished Atwood
scholar, led the Fall Workshop for book group leaders and
other interested participants.
The featured book for 2009 was The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Hammett's third novel (published in 1930), evokes the fallen world of the late 1920's in a lean, spare prose that has become synonymous with the "hard-boiled" style. The story of an antique treasure at the center of a web of lies, treachery, theft, and murder, this novel portrays the chaos of the modern world as vividly and with as keen a sense of social significance as contemporary works by Faulkner, Hemingway, or Fitzgerald.
The featured book for 2008 was Persuasion, by Jane
Austen. Austen’s
last published novel is a historically rich, emotionally nuanced
story of second chances.
Click here to view pictures from the 2009 extravaganza.
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