Purdue News
Purdue News
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January 21, 2004 Books and Coffee program features best sellers, award-winnersWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Four best-selling books, including novels by two award-winning women authors, will be discussed during the 2004 season of Purdue University's Books and Coffee series. The Thursday afternoon programs will be in Stewart Center, rooms 302 and 306, except for the Feb. 12 program, which will be in the Purdue Memorial Union's South Ballroom. Coffee and tea are available beginning at 4 p.m., with the half-hour talks starting at 4:30 p.m. The programs are free and open to the public. "Books and Coffee, now in its 53rd year, has provided a venue where book lovers from Purdue and the community can gather to learn more about their favorite works and authors," says Tom Adler, professor of English and faculty coordinator. The program is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Purdue Student Union Board. On Feb. 5, Ruth Salvaggio, professor of English and director of the Women's Studies Program, will discuss "Unless," the final novel by Pulitzer-Prize winner Carol Shields. In "Unless," Reta Winters, a best-selling writer of women's fiction, begins to examine her own happiness when she discovers her once-promising daughter silent and penniless on a Toronto street corner with a sign reading "Goodness" hanging from her neck. In honor of Black History Month, Nancy Peterson, associate professor of English and associate editor of Modern Fiction Studies, will speak on Feb. 12 about "Love," the latest novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. Set in a resort hotel that once catered to blacks and is now haunted by a ghostly voice from the past, Morrison's work explores love on several levels, as it tells of two old women vying for the legacy of the hotel's owner, whose spirit still pervades the place. David Blakesley, associate professor of English and director of professional writing, will talk on Feb. 19 about Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City." Larson's book, nominated for a National Book Award, counterpoints the story of Chicago's "World's Columbian Exposition of 1893," with the tale of a psychopath who lured young women – including one with Lafayette family connections – to their violent deaths. The series will conclude on Feb. 26 when Sally Mason, university provost, shares her thoughts on the runaway best seller, "The Da Vinci Code." Dan Brown's intellectual thriller, filled with arcane, and sometimes grossly inaccurate, history and myth concerning Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail, follows a Harvard professor and a French cryptologist as they pursue a killer from the Louvre in Paris to Westminster Abbey in London. Writer: Amy Patterson-Neubert, (765) 494-9723, appaterson@purdue.edu Sources: Tom Adler, (765) 494-6478, tadler@purdue.edu Sara Solloway, Purdue Student Union Board Program Director, (765) 494-8976, solloway@purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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