Is this too formal a start for us? I hope not. I’m just
excited about joining a reading community and wanted to do my part to get our
group jumpstarted in 2015!
Here’s the gist of what I heard everyone say when we
explored the M.O. for this group.
- We love books, but we spend most of our time online and have lost the discipline and pleasure of reading.
- We want to read books that make us think.
- We want to read books that are worthy of discussion.
- We want to meet with a diverse group of people who can help us tease more meaning out of a book.
- We want more for ourselves than just our work, and we see books as a way to learn something that takes us beyond just existing.
- While the social part of getting together is great, we felt the book discussion should remain our primary focus.
- We thought we might take turns facilitating.
- We thought everyone might make a commitment to give 90 percent effort to reading the book that's selected each month--even if they despise it.
Things that were unresolved.
- Whether to meet in a public spot or in private homes
- What day of the week
- What time of the day
- How to select the books
Below, our blog has some polls that can help us resolve those matters.
If everyone can complete those by New Year's Day, we'll be pretty well set to start.
Two bits
1) I don’t care either way where we meet, but it tends to be
less complicated in public space. I’ve talked to Traders Point Creamery and
Indy Reads Book Store on Mass Avenue. Both are possible public spaces, but I
think there are countless other options we could explore.
2) National Public Radio is starting a Morning Book Club. One
of my favorite contemporary authors, Ann Patchett, says that Deep Down Dark is
truly the book of the year to read. In this link, Patchett talks about what makes a book great
for a book group AND the value of a book group. Considering our humble
beginnings, take a listen to her NPR interview.
One thought to make book selection easier at the start: we could follow the NPR Morning Book
Club reads for a while and see if we like reading along. I’m
sure we’ll get well-vetted books that way. The other idea is that you can
simply nominate books for our reading list by commenting on this post. (Include book title, author, one line description.) After we’ve
collected everyone’s responses, we can put up another survey and let people pick their favorites
That’s it friends! Invite away and let’s see if we can come
up with a group of 8 to 12 readers. What a great way to start 2015!
Cheers,
Crystal
