Logo with the text 'THE GUILD' in large white letters on a black background, and smaller text below saying 'a bookclub & livestream'.
Book cover of 'Till We Have Faces' by C.S. Lewis, featuring a stylized illustration of a woman holding a lantern in front of a dark wall, with a red, black, and blue background.

This Month’s Read

For our second installment of The Guild, we will be reading C.S. Lewis’s, “Till We Have Faces”, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, written in 1956. Unlike The Hobbit, we will read this entire book for our meeting and livestream. Because of this, we will allow a little more time to get through it. This book is a little over 300 pages, so this is very doable!

Join us and read along. We would love to hear your thoughts and responses to our prompts and questions when we livestream our club meeting on Sunday, September 13th at 11am eastern time.

Stay tuned for links to the livestream which will appear hear and in our Discord. Speaking of our Discord, we have a role for you that lets you in on our Guild channel. Why not join The Guild community? Here is a link.

The cover of a book titled "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien, featuring artistic illustrations of mountains, trees, and a river under a sky with flying birds.

We’ve Read The Hobbit

For our first installment of The Guild, we read The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein in three installments. (see below) We had a lively deep dive of this book and engaged with the chat on a variety of topics and question prompts. Of course, in true Shire style, we named the sessions after meals: First Breakfast, Second Breakfast, and Elevensies.

This book is the precursor to the Lord of the Rings and tells the tale of a Hobbit’s grand adventure into Middle Earth, a high fantasy setting of mythic proportions. Discussions will center on the text, not the movies. If you have never read this book, realize that there are major differences between the two.

Check out the links below and watch us as we discuss the most important work of fantasy fiction ever written.

First Breakfast

Chapters 1-3

Second Breakfast

Chapters 4-11

Elevensies

Chapters 12-19

What is The Guild?

We wanted to begin hosting discussions around what we are reading and we thought you should all come along. The Guild’s participants on the stream will rotate as the books change with an aim at keeping the discussion lively. We want to dig into our readings and spark new conversations and explore where these writings connect to our other interests. We are starting with Tolkein and will likely follow The Hobbit with The Lord of the Rings. We will post polls for voting on what books we should read next, look to our community for questions and discussion prompts and more.

In the future, The Guild wants to produce a newsletter with summaries of discussions, schedules and other news for what is in the pipeline next.