Long Beach
Reading Group
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Long Beach Reading Group
Desiree by Annemarie Selinko
Contact
Member Christina Llata baked Jane Austen silhouette cookies and put together Austen-themed teabags for the group’s annual Jane Austen Birthday Tea in December 2016.
About
The Long Beach reading group meets every four to six weeks, generally on Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. Approximately seven to 12 members participate at each meeting, with no designated discussion leader. Everyone is encouraged to just jump in! The intellectual nourishment is supplemented by a delicious smorgasbord of potluck-style sweet and savory treats.
Over the years, the group also has met to enjoy movie nights, attend plays together and even to support a longtime member’s book signing. Recently, prompted by George Eliot’s Silas Marner, a member gave a hands-on demonstration of how to use a spinning wheel. An ongoing and much loved tradition is to celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday with an afternoon tea at a local British tea shop. The group’s get-togethers are wonderful opportunities to connect with interesting, clever and thought-provoking people over interesting, clever and thought-provoking books.
New members are welcome!
Alice Villaseñor and Jameson Yu
History
Long Beach has seen previous Jane Austen reading group incarnations form and disband over several decades. After a lengthy hiatus, the current Long Beach Reading Group was launched in May 2008 by two novice JASNA-Southwest members, Margot Scheibe and Gerda Kilgore, who owed their friendship to Colin Firth’s Darcy since Margot and Gerda first met at a screening of Bridget Jones’s Diary! Margot discovered Jane Austen late in life but was determined to make up for lost time with her boundless energy, infectious enthusiasm and gentle insistence on hosting the group at her home for the majority of meetings until she passed away in 2012. Gerda Kilgore served as host for most meetings until 2017, when she moved to Europe. Gerda passed away in 2019. Sherwood Smith, an original member of the relaunched group, took over as group leader in summer 2017.
Margot’s proudest moment as co-founder was to see two group members—Alice Villaseñor and Jameson Yu—get engaged and then married in 2012, and to subsequently lose them to their new lives on the East Coast!
Reading List Archive
In 2008, the Long Beach Reading Group started out reading Jane Austen’s six novels, her Juvenilia and her unfinished works, her letters and various biographies, before branching out to other authors. Over the years, the group has had lively discussions on many classics by authors such as Richardson, Burney, the Brontës, Eliot, Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, Defoe, Smollett and Goldsmith. Members have delighted in a number of volumes of what they consider their particular, ongoing favorites: Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, Patrick O’Brian and Georgette Heyer. More unusual fare has included Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mrs. Gore’s Pin Money and R. H. Gronow’s Reminiscences of Captain Gronow. While the group mostly reads fiction, members have enjoyed, among other choices, James-Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen; Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things; and a cracking, spirited reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, for which group members took on all the speaking parts.
2022
February 26 Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquary
January 22
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
2021
January 16
The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser
February 27
Pride and Prejudice: Text vs. TV
April 10
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
May 22
Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
July 10
Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery
August 28
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
November 6
The Brontës by Juliet Barker
December 11
Birthday Tea
2020
December 12
Jane Austen birthday celebration
November 14
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
September 12
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
August 8
Middlemarch by George Eliot
June 20, 12:30 p.m.
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (book and miniseries)
May 9
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
March 7
Sanditon miniseries and Sanditon by Jane Austen and Another Lady
2019
January 26
A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Austen-Leigh
March 2
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
2018
November 17
Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne
September 22
Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
July 28
The Rivals by Richard Sheridan
June 30
Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan by Ted Scheinman
May 19
Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
April 7
Persuasion by Jane Austen
March 3
Evelina by Fanny Burney
January 13
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2017
January 29
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
March 11
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
May 20
Lady Susan and Sanditon by Jane Austen
August 5
The Watsons, Lady Susan and Sanditon by Jane Austen
September 9
Jane Austen’s Writing Advice: Letters to Anna Austen
November 11
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
2016
January 30
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne
March 12
Persuasion by Jane Austen
April 9
Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.): Letters 97-116
May 21
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
June 25
Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832, by Stella Tillyard
August 13
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (letters 1-257) by Samuel Richardson
November 5
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (second half) by Samuel Richardson
December 17
Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Rode (Pride and Prejudice commentary)
2015
January 24
Pin Money by Mrs. (Catherine Grace Frances) Gore
March 7
Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman
April 19
Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
June 6
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
July 11
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
August 22
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
October 17
Silas Marner by George Eliot
November 15
The Janeites by Rudyard Kipling and a short selection of Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.)
December 12
Lady Susan by Jane Austen and a short selection of Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.)
2014
February 8
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
April 4
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
May 24
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
July 12
Middlemarch by George Eliot
September 6
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
October 4
Cousin Phyllis by Elizabeth Gaskell
November 22
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
December 14
A short selection of Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.)
2013
January 12
H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian
February 17
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
April 13
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
May 11
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
June 22
Memoir of Jane Austen by James-Edward Austen-Leigh
August 4
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
September 1
The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
October 12
Emma by Jane Austen
November 16
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
December 28
A short selection of Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.)
2012
February 4
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
March 17
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
April 28
The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer
June 9
Emma by Jane Austen
July 14
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
August 25
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
November 3
Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian
December 8
Persuasion by Jane Austen
2011
January 29
Evelina by Frances Burney
March 13
Pamela by Samuel Richardson and Shamela by Henry Fielding
April 9
Reminiscences of Captain Gronow by R. H. Gronow
May 21
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
July 16
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
September 10
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
November 5
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
December 17
Persuasion by Jane Austen
2010
January 12
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
February 27
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
April 24
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
June 12
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
July 17
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
August 28
The Duke’s Children and The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
October 16
Middlemarch by George Eliot
December 11
Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray
2009
January 17
Emma by Jane Austen
February 21
Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon by Jane Austen
March 28
Various biographies of Jane Austen (each member read one of their own choice)
May 9
Jane Austen’s Letters (Deirdre Le Faye, ed.)
June 13
Jane Austen’s Juvenilia
August 1
Sanditon by Jane Austen and Another Lady
September 12
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
October 24
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
November 21
Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer
2008
June 15
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
July 26
Persuasion by Jane Austen
September 6
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
October 25
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
December 6
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen