We saw fewer book scouts than usual.
We didn’t have to stand in line.
We came home with two boxes of books.
Some of the most exciting finds at the sale are:
Stephen Dixon’s Interstate, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1995. He is a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Pen/Faulkner Award finalist, and has won three O. Henry Awards, two NEA Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, and he taught for 26 years in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. (We have an autographed copy of 14 Stories, but, hm, no autograph in this.)
Agatha Christie’s Murder by the Box: a boxed set of They Came to Baghdad, The Golden Ball and Other Stories, The Boomerang Clue, and The Murder at Hazelmoor.
Ivy Compton-Burnett’s The Present and the Past. According to the book jacekt: “…her addicts, for that is what one can safely call Miss Compton-Burnett’s admirers, need have no fear; this novel is as trim and tidy as a hand grenade.”
Rex Warner’s The Young Caesar. A historical novel by the classicist and translator who also wrote The Aerodrome, one of my favorite science fiction books.
Muriel Spark’s Territorial Rights. No idea if I’ve read this one or not. It was only $1.
Zola’s Germinal. We have a copy somewhere, but this appears never to have been read, so if I want to reread it…. (only $2).
Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit. The cover says: “The once-banned, and best-selling novel about an illicit love affair and race relations in 1920s Georgia.”
A FEW WORDS ABOUT BOOK GROUPS. A few days ago I compiled some information about online book groups. There is an impressive variety, ranging from classics groups to small-press groups to Janet Evanovich groups to groups that specialize in quirky out-of-print books.
Now in real life book groups are different. If you want to read a book that you want to read you have to run the group.
I’m joking, but I’m also telling the truth.
That’s because we read BOOK GROUP BOOKS. You know what these are. They are books with book group guides in the back. I don’t understand the obsession with book group guides, but in the last 10 years I’ve seen a shift. People who run book groups depend on the questions in the guides. The guide questions are simple, the kind of questions you ask yourself anyway, so I don’t see the point.
It is likely that your book group has read one or more of the following: Half Broke Horses, The Help, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Bel Canto, Julie Ostsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic, The Half Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Ape House
Most are good or goodish, I see at least three prize winners, but there are a lot of other new books out there. Where are Mo Yan (the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature announced yesterday), Zadie Smith’s NW, anything by Stephen Dixon–you get the picture.
I don’t say much at book groups. I inveighed against The Secret Life of Bees, and it turned out it was the best book everybody else ever read.
And really, you go because the women are quite nice, not because it’s important to dislike The Secret Life of Bees.
I’ve been in some great book groups that, unfortunately, broke up after about 10 years.
We need face-to-face book groups because the people are nice. But on the internet we find groups that discuss books we want to read.
There’s the problem that people try to keep up a face or stance of respectability and status. So when books are chosen by book club groups they must have an apparently high quotient of improvement. Something seen as utterly frivolous or junk or over-sexed, or too much a rant will not do; books are sought which have a wide appeal so anything idiosyncratic or really radical is often eschewed. Nothing too pessimistic. The deepening problem for a reader who wants to read unusual books, darker books, who has unusual or uncommon views is MFAs nowadays teach people to write fluently, simply and accessibly. No super-long books. Publshers refuse to publish things they fear will have only a tiny audience – especially in the days of the Internet where it’s hard to be heard.
So it’s hard for an astonishing new voice with difficult style and an unusual or pessimistic voice to get into print. My publisher kept insisting I “lighten” up, make this or that more affirmative.
Book club group discussions are limited by what people are willing to say socially and they are limited by the lowest common denominator in the room. Sometimes online discussions can say more because you are allowed more time to think and can produce a discourse. It’s not conversation on line for real but writing presented as talk.
E.M.
Ellen – yes!
And as to the post – yes! as well. Book groups as an official reason for convening with nice people is all well & good, but the book analysis aspect tends to get lost in the shuffle. And the several times over the years I have dabbled in book groups, I found I was too often the lone dissenting voice on the club choice du jour; the last straw for me was the meeting where the majority of the lovely people present (and yes, they are all lovely people – that is a sincere compliment) persisted in discussing Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code as if it were a piece of original research and NON-FICTION!!! And there I was, occasionally interjecting, “Umm, you guys do realize that this is a work of fiction…?” I was glared at by the chief Brown acolyte, so subsided & made it to the end wearing a neutral smile & maintaining a strict outer silence, and since then made excuses of busyness to avoid subsequent meetings. They no longer call me, though we are still social friends.
Online discussion… often I don’t jump into an interesting discussion, but find myself nodding in agreement (or very occasionally going “Noooooo!!!!” in my head) and therefore much of my participation is introverted, but it is hugely enjoyable to read the well thought out words of so many articulate people. A safer place to disagree, or present a conflicting or challenging analysis/opinion, than in a friend’s living room.
It is early – I am rambling – the gist of this is that I liked this post & response!
As we were. Happy Friday, people. 🙂 We’ve almost made it through another week. This one has seemed long and occasionally tedious. The gloomy weather yesterday & impending threat of snow is making me feel seasonally sombre, I think.
I have avoided book groups for this reason: Usually when someone mentions to me that they are in a book group it is followed by “we usually spend time drinking wine and talking about what is going on with us.” Oh, really?
Now why, I ask myself, would I want to take time to read a book (chosen by someone else) only to listen to women chat on about husbands, children, an/or jobs.
No thanks. I am a solitary reader and intend to stay that way.
Ellen, at unadventurous book groups, you’re right, people go for books everyone might (kind of) like. It’s supposed to be relaxing. I’m trying to think how many book groups have read Peace like a River and The Tiger’s Wife. Yes, yes, the latter is a good book, but must every book group read it? They ARE short. Hmmm. Nobody is making it through Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City, and why the hell not? And it’s a better book.
Ellen, Leaves and Pages, and Belle, I have been in some excellent book groups, which do read unusual, sometimes long books, but unfortunately these groups have broken up (the leader gets tired or something), and without the leader, people are less committed.
I don’t mind dissenting if people don’t get mad, but they do. Oh my God! How could I have not liked Peace like a River? (How could anyone have liked it?) Belle, why on earth don’t my book groups drink wine? Well, we don’t talk about personal things anyway. It focuses on the book till the end.
I just don’t like the idea that only SOME books are pushed for book groups. I’m just astonished. All the libraries, all the bookstores, and many other book groups are really going for this book group book thing.
I don’t recognise either of the book groups to which I belong in the discussion going on here. One of the groups meets in a public hall and we’re invariably thrown out after our two hours are up because we’re still in the middle of heated debate about the book. Time is usually called on the other one when the poor husband of whoever’s house we’re meeting in can’t stop in the local pub any longer. Maybe I’ve just been remarkably lucky in the groups to which I belong.
Our book group (Ex Libris) is diverse and we meet afternoons, so most of us are retired or semi-retired. Once a year we have an election for the coming year. Each member nominates 3 or 4 books. Then we have a scaled vote as to our personal desire to read and discuss the book. The book may be entirely worthy, but you have just read it and don’t want to go around again — or you may think it is a dreadful book. The votes are scored and we then have a list of top choices from which we make up the calendar for the coming year. Longer works are broken up into two or more sessions (we meet every two weeks) because most of us need for other reading also.
It has worked well for us, but we are a self-selected group interested mostly in the classics. We have read books by Tolstoy, Dickens, Proust, Stendahl, Balzac, Zola, Homer, Mark Twain, Hawthorne and more others than I can remember. In recent years we are trying to be more international, including books by African and Asian writers. Usually we do not read current best sellers, although we did read Wolf Hall and enjoyed it very much.
We have our room at the local community college for 1.5 hours and there are no refreshments, just an annual barbeque at a member’s house.
Alex and Silver Season, you describe the kind of book groups I would love to belong to Really, I have belonged to intelligent book groups with creative leaders. Although there wasn’t a democracy in choosing books, we read a wide range of types of books.
I belong to a book club with very nice and bright women. I also detest the book questions at the back of the book. The persons leading the discussions usually do not refer to these questions, but the included questions make me question the book itself! My real reading pleasure is elsewhere.