Addicted to Print: Reflections on the Joys of Reading

February 27 - April 3, 2025

 

We turn to reading for a host of reasons, from exploring some of the more challenging issues of the world around us, to escaping into a life and a world different from our own. Sometimes we are looking for information, sometimes for an engaging narrative, and occasionally just for the pure pleasure of well-tuned prose or poetry. Our tastes may vary over time, but some things will probably remain constant. What can you learn when you examine your own history as a reader, from your earliest texts to what you read last week?

Series Coordinator:

Cheryl Kryzaniwsky 

Lecturer - Gary Draper

Gary Draper is a retired English Professor (St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo) with a doctorate in 19th-century Canadian Literature (Western University, London). He has taught a wide variety of third age learning courses.
Gary has been an editor, a book reviewer, and a collector of Canadian cookbooks, and he continues to be an avid reader, an occasional gardener, a tentative choral singer, and a passable solver of crossword puzzles.

 

6 lectures, live at the Bayshore Centre and Online on Vimeo

Replays on demand until May 10 on Vimeo

The Beginning

  • Date: Thursday Feb. 27, 2025, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    Every reader has a starting point, or a constellation of them. Who read or sang to you? What did you first read to yourself? It can be illuminating to look at our earliest texts and consider where we found them and what they gave us.

     

    Escaping

    • Date: Thursday, March 6, 2025  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    Sometimes the world can be too much for us and we need to step out of our lives and into a book that takes us far from the world that we must inhabit. Mystery, adventure, and imaginary worlds so different from our own can be just a bookshelf away.

     

     

    Engaging and Stretching

    • Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    All books change us in some way, some more than others. We can learn more about ourselves and about the world we live in through reading. Leaving our comfort zone can be challenging or energizing or enlightening. Sometimes it’s all three at once.

     

    Paying Attention to Form (1): Fiction

    • Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    The novel has a long history and enduring appeal. What are some of the reasons for its continuing popularity? And what about short stories? In this Age of Distraction, shorter forms of fiction can offer outsize rewards, without demanding an extended time commitment in return.

     

    Paying Attention to Form (2): Poetry

    • Date: Thursday, March 27, 2025  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    Does anybody read poetry anymore? If not, why not? More importantly, if so, why? Many of us leave poetry behind when we leave school. It can be revealing to come back to poetry not to exercise our critical skills but just for the joy of language.

     

    Getting On

    • Date: Thursday, April 3, 2025  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
    • Location: Bayshore Community Centre, Owen Sound

    It can be illuminating to read about old age, whether you find your reading in the self-help section, in fiction, or in poetry. It can also be interesting to ask if our reading habits change as we age. If so, how, and why? Are there changes we wish to make, or feel we ought to?