“Symposium is different. It’s not a book club where you read the latest bestseller, sip wine, gossip, and do everything but talk about the book. And it’s not an academic seminar either – where a rumpled, aging professor in an ill-fitting corduroy blazer lectures on why a great book is sacrosanct. Instead, Symposium gives you – the average reader – an opportunity to tussle, engage, and struggle with understanding, the big ideas of life. Symposium participants are not expected to have any advanced knowledge about a text or to even have any idea who the author is. Many times, I have fundamentally misunderstood a text or read a passage incorrectly, but during (and after) the discussions, I have come away with a better understanding of the text through the thoughtful comments of others. Symposium will force you to engage authors and to tackle ideas that are so easily glanced over.”