an eye in the head of a poet

On Clubs and Books Concerning Them

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:00:19 -0500

One of the things I’ve really wanted to do this year is read more. I read more than the average adult, probably, but I always tended towards the voracious in my youth and the slowing down in reading habits that came with adulthood has always been a point of personal frustration with me. Just as I discover a world with infinite books and an ability to afford them all, I find myself with less time and less energy with which to engage with them.

I’ve tried multiple things to keep myself reading at a good pace. Probably the most profound was switching to ebooks, which has been an adventure all its own. That comes with benefits and drawbacks. You can get books cheap, and I feel much more willing to be adventurous with my reading habits. But it’s also easy to become a book hoarder and end up with hundreds of unread books because they take up no space and form no hard-to-ignore guilt pile.

So I decided to do something to keep myself reading at least a book a month. I started a book club. I figured (rightly, so far) that if I read one book a month for sure, it’d become easier to read more than one a month, because it would habituate my reading habits. It would also, by the very nature of a club set-up, widen my horizons with the types of books I would read.

That’s because of how my book club works. Right now we’re three members large, and each month one of us picks a book for everyone to read. There’s no need to seek a consensus, no voting on choices, everyone gets a month that is wholly there’s to bring a book to the table. My only real rule is that A) it be available at a reasonable cost and B) it not be part of a series, because that’s an unreasonable burden of fiction. We have a month to read the book, and then at the end of each month we gather together on Skype to talk about it. It’s pretty informal, it’s pretty low investment (one book and maybe 90 minutes one evening), and it’s decidedly pleasant, even when we disagree.

So far it’s gone okay, even if we’re only in the third month of the club. My main goal, that of encouraging everyone to make individual choices and exploring outside our usual comfort zones, has so far been pretty true: the three books we’ve read have all been very unique (see below for our first three books), and while they’ve met with varied levels of success, I’ve been really excited to explore them, and I think my fellow club-mates feel likewise.

That said, I’m not here to brag, I’m actually here to recruit. While I think three is a fine number of people for a club, I’d really like it to be more like four or five. The problem is, while I know plenty of people who read, I know less people who are as adventurous enough to let someone else choose one of the books they read a month every month. I think it’s thrilling, but I love being omnivorous in my reading diet—I’ll readily admit that might not be the case for everyone.

Which is why I’m writing this. If you’re at all interested in being a part of my book club, I’d be happy to have new members join up and contribute. You’d be folded into the monthly cycle, you’d read a lot of diverse fiction, and you’ll be able to talk about it with pretty smart adults (I’ll demure, but my club-mates are both really smart!) in a convenient setting. There’s literally no drawback that I can think of, and plenty of benefits.

If you’re interested, feel free to drop me a line at mdmarko1@gmail.com and let me know. There isn’t any sort of screening process, I just want people who like to read and won’t flake on the fairly loose rules I’ve already set out above. And if you yourself aren’t capable, but know someone who might be interested, bring them along. We welcome anyone, friend or relative stranger!

See you at the Book Club (or not, if you suck ;) )!

Previous Books Clubbed:

The Moviegoer, by Walker Percey
Donnybrook: A Novel, by Frank Bill
Half-Blood Blues: A Novel, by Esi Edugyan

[…] anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing...

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:00:23 -0500

[…] anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.

Guns, by Stephen King

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Sun, 05 May 2013 01:38:16 -0500

There’s actually an error in this one, but I was mostly...

Sat, 04 May 2013 18:00:21 -0500

There’s actually an error in this one, but I was mostly all the way through and just pushed through. You’ll have to deal. Recording quotes this long is hard.

But, good as it is, my old place is used up (places get used up by rotatory and repetitive use) and when I awake, I awake in the grip of everydayness. Everydayness is the enemy. No search is possible. Perhaps there was a time when everydayness was not too strong and one could break its grip by brute strength. Now nothing breaks it—but disaster. Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in a ditch.

In a sudden rage and, as if I had been seized by a fit, I roll over and fall in a heap on the floor and lie shivering on the boards, worse off than the miserablest muskrat in the swamp. Nevertheless I vow: I’m a son of a bitch if I’ll be defeated by the everydayness.

(The everydayness is everywhere now, having begun in the cities and seeking out the remotest nooks and corners of the countryside, even the swamps.)

For minutes at a stretch I lie rigid as a stick and breathe the black exhalation of the swamp.

Neither my mother’s family nor my father’s family understand my search.

My mother’s family think I have lost my faith and they pray for me to recover it. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Other people, so I have read, are pious as children and later become skeptical (or, as they say on This I Believe: “in time I outgrew the creeds and dogmas of organized religion”). Not I. My unbelief was invincible from the beginning. I could never make head or tail of God. The proofs of God’s existence may have been true for all I know, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. If God himself had appeared to me, it would have changed nothing. In fact, I have only to hear the word God and a curtain comes down in my head.

My father’s family think that the world makes sense without God and that anyone but an idiot knows what the good life is and anyone but a scoundrel can lead it.

I don’t know what either of them are talking about. Really I can’t make head or tail of it. The best I can do is lie rigid as a stick under the cot, locked in a death grip with everydayness, sworn not to move a muscle until I advance another inch in my search. The swamp exhales beneath me and across the bayou a night bittern pumps away like a diesel. At last the iron grip relaxes and I pull my pants off the chair, fish out a notebook and scribble in the dark:

REMEMBER TOMORROW

Starting point for search:

It no longer avails to start with creatures and prove God.

Yet it is impossible to rule God out.

The only possible starting point: the strange fact of one’s own invincible apathy—that if the proofs were proved and God presented himself, nothing would be changed. Here is the strangest fact of all.

Abraham saw signs of God and believed. Now the only sign is that all the signs in the world make no difference. Is this God’s ironic revenge? But I am onto him.