A.B.C. Fall 2010 - New Announcements!

Our apologies for the late start, but A.B.C. meetings will resume in Week 3! We have a lot of new things planned this quarter and I hope you all can join us.

A.B.C. Meetings

When: Wednesdays 4:30-5:30 (first meeting in week 3)
Where: UCI Bookstore

Membership fees are $10/quarter and $20/year (optimal). You do not have to be a member to join our discussions, but events and activities are covered for those with memberships.

We are proud to announce the new theme for this quarter: Twisted Tales, in honor of Halloween. The following is the book list in the order we will be reading them:

1. Haunted: A Novel of Stories by Chuck Palahniuk
Summary: Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Writers’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months,” and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world—and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell—and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight.

2. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Summary: Macbeth is among the best-known of William Shakespeare's plays, and is his shortest tragedy, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606. Often regarded as archetypal, the play tells of the dangers of the lust for power and the betrayal of friends. It also includes a reach out to the paranormal, on ghosts and witches, their warnings and their curses.

3. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Summary: Aging death-metal rock legend Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals...a used hangman's noose...a snuff film. But nothing he possesses is as unique or as dreadful as his latest purchase off the Internet: a one-of-a-kind curiosity that arrives at his door in a black heart-shaped box...a musty dead man's suit still inhabited by the spirit of its late owner. And now everywhere Judas Coyne goes, the old man is there—watching, waiting, dangling a razor blade on a chain from his bony hand.

We are planning to accompany our readings of perverse, horror-inspired stories with different activities / events such as taking a ghost tour or one-time course on the paranormal, attending a Shakespeare play, or watching horror films based on novels. Please drop by the first meeting for more details! We will also be discussing what we have read so far in Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted.