Dreamers of the Day-Dayton's Big Read

To celebrate Dayton's Big Read at the Tipp City Library we will hold our discussion of the book on Monday, March 22nd at 7 p.m. Copies of the books can be picked up at the front desk. The setting of this book is the Cairo Peace Conference in 1921. In the book we are introduced to Agnes, a former Ohio school teacher, on her first major trip of her life. The war and influenza have left her alone in the world, without a job, and enough money to embark to the Middle East to recreate the trip her sister had once taken and had written home about. Mistaken for her sister by T.E. Lawrence, she is swept up into the drama surrounding the Peace Conference. Nonfiction books to read along side this novel are T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Georgina Howell's 2007 book, Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert and Shaper of Nations, and Malcolm Brown's 2005 book Lawrence of Arabia: The Life, The Legend. These books can also be picked up at the front desk or reserved. Also recommended is the PBS special Lawrence of Arabia: the Battle for the Arab World. As much as I loved Mary Doria Russell's novel, Dreamers of the Day, I was inspired to read more of the history background to the storyline. Even the title of the book is taken from T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible."