10 Years of Book Club!

BOOK CLUB was established back in 2011! I invited people over and handed out weird questionnaires in the living room and gave everyone a copy of Siddhartha, which I have listed as our first selection from October of 2011. Enthusiasm was mixed, much like with most of my ideas. We took a long break there, seeming to have issues deciding on selections, participation qualms affected our momentum. We sat dormant for nearly 5 years. In our ten years of BOOK CLUB we have read 10 selections, meaning we have so far averaged ONE BOOK per year. There are worse things. This is AT LEAST something. Little boons, that could be another name for this reading group.

After falling off the Book Mobile with Siddhartha in 2011, we successfully revived the spirit of BOOK CLUB back in 2017 with Carli’s selection of Lincoln in the Bardo. BOOK CLUB was in its own kind of bardo, at the time and this led to some good momentum. We have since read 8 more books in the past 3.5 years, that’s about one every 5-6 months! That’s much better. Most importantly, to me, when Jodi joined she basically became co-admin, keeping me going with it, which I greatly appreciate! As per our fourth rule, only two worms are needed to choose a book, and sometimes that’s all we have had for selections, but what’s important to me is that we continue to move forward. We should always strive to maintain an active selection.

We have thus far chosen books that have lead us to read sequels twice, and both times it has been fun. We have chosen books that pair up with movie interpretations we didn’t know existed, others we saw the movie first and decided to compare and contrast the book, others we have simply chosen a similarly themed movie to watch along with it, as we did with Lamb and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I made Minnie’s Chocolate Pie for us to enjoy during our watching of The Help, minus the shit, of course. We fall off with it, but then we always get back on eventually. Interest waned somewhat, and then my brother chimed in suggesting Dune for a read, recently. Just in time to keep things going, once again. I have read roughly 3, 132 pages with y’all so far. All in all, it’s been enjoyable reading with you, friends! Let’s keep going; we still need to sell enough candy bars to get those matching sequin jackets! Haha.

SUGGESTIONS for SELECTIONS?

In our original document or scroll of leads and reads, I think I had listed Catcher in the Rye. That’s a short one that would be good to tackle at some point. I think it would be interesting to discuss, and Wagner has probably still never finished it? Haa. It could be fun to read Fight Club together, given it’s our namesake and has a movie even, though I know a lot of us have already read it. One I wanted to suggest was Girl, Interrupted, because I have never read the book, but the movie is enjoyable and we could pair it up. I think it’s short, as well. I’d like to read a Bruce Lee book? What are different things we could read together? Our possibilities are endless, give some input! We’ll keep a list going. Chime in on this post and drop whatever titles you’d like to add to our reading pool. We’ll just decide on selections from the living list, as it grows. If we keep up with our next one, #12 is probably going to be around February of 2022, so any ideas? What say y’all?

PAST SELECTIONS:

#1 Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

#2 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

#3 Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

#4 Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

#5 Lamb by Christopher Moore

#6 The Hike by Drew Magery

#7 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

#8 The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

#9 The Help by Kathryn Stockett

#10 Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom

NEXT UP:

#11 Dune by Frank Herbert