The Book Club - strike two?

Sometimes I sit down at my computer with the idea of writing something for this blog. Then, when I load the "create post" window, all the different ideas in my head swirl together, uniting to form one giant mass of thoughts, phrases, subjects, and feelings too large to be comprehended, too unmovable to trickle down from my brain to my fingertips and out onto my keyboard and into cyberspace. Earlier today I sat down to write, but only now, after a mild nap, am I able to pull apart that mass of ideas, isolate a single one, and turn it into a blog post.

Last summer I attempted to organize a book club. By all possible external measures, I wasn't very successful. Out of the approximately fifteen people that committed in some degree to participate, only a handful of people actually read the books and met to discuss them. Though numerical success eluded The Book Club, I still managed to feel that the venture was successful, the whole quality over quantity thing. I really enjoyed the books we read (The Storyteller's Daughter by Saira Shah and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Both books had a profound impact on me and discussing them was pleasurable and informative. I'm grateful for those who took the time to read the books and participate in the discussion, and I hope that they were able to take as much from the experience as I was.

I bring this up because I want to try again this summer. I know that numerical success is just as likely to elude me this year as it did last year, but that is not discouraging me from trying again. As a post-college working man, I have plenty of time to take charge of the venture and make it happen. By getting word out much earlier this time, the club's reading options will expand tremendously, reservations could soon be placed with libraries, and the whole thing could be ready months before the club would actually convene.

I hereby extend an invitation to anyone who will be in the Provo area this upcoming summer (late-April to September 2009) to join The Book Club. I will go ahead and begin assembling a list of the books that will be immediately available after BYU's winter semester ends, and interested parties will be contacted with the options and allowed to indicate which books they are interested in reading that summer. I'll take care of the more administrative tasks, but if anyone is interested in reading and discussing thought-provoking literature, you are more than welcome to join The Book Club.

If you've never been in a book club and are apprehensive of what goes down, know that I, too, am quite new to this. We weren't very formal at all. Really all that is required is to be willing to read a book and engage in conversation about it. That's it. Hit me with a comment if you're interested.

I thought I'd close with eleven quotes about literature and reading that I found last year as I was unemployed, searching for a job and setting up The Book Club. Let these remind you of the power of reading and why, if you have any inkling of desire to join The Book Club, you should.

“Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.” - Gertrude Stein

“Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.” - Augustine Birrell

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” - Joseph Brodsky

“It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.” - Henry David Thoreau

“We read to know we are not alone.” - C.S. Lewis

“Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” - Marcel Proust

“A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.” - William Styron

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” - Jessamyn West

“In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” - S.I. Hayakawa

“In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” - Mortimer J. Adler

“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.” - Ezra Pound

Let the second life of The Book Club commence, however short lived and tragic it might be.