Entertainment For Lively Minds
Book Group is in the house
Tonight the FPO has her monthly book group and it's her turn to host it which means I have to make myself scarce or at least vacate the living room and be respectfully quiet.
Knitting will be done, wine will be drunk, various tasty snacks will be consumed, chit chat will occur - oh, and a book will be discussed.
While they all have a jolly good time and have been doing this for at least 5 years now it just baffles me why anyone would bother.
I can't imagine anything worse than sitting round with the same half a dozen people once a month discussing something that you might not even have liked. I'd rather post a couple of well chosen sentences in this place or just discuss a book I've read (or a movie or CD) with a mate in the course of general conversation. But the almost-formal organised get-together just to talk about a book? I just don't get it.
Am I peculiar?
Or is it, as I suspect, a mysterious female urge that will be forever beyond my woeful comprehension?
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It sounds like fun to me
Even if you don't like the book, it's still a good way to make sure you see your friends regularly.
Nothing wrong with book groups
I'd love to go to a book club, but no time etc. I've got close to organising a music equivalent once or twice, but same excuses.
There's a monthly "First Tuesday Book Club" on TV here in Australia http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/ which I always try to make the effort to watch. (Not this month,though, since it included "Pride and Prejudice" but without zombies.) Usually enjoy it, often wish I could join in, and a couple of times have bought a book based on the discussion.
Try It With Chewns, Mousey - Friday Night Is Music Night
Every so often I get together with a group of male friends for a civilized evening of music. Gathering in one of our front rooms facing a decent pair of speakers and decks, this "almost-formal organised get-together" is one of the purest joys of existence. Drink is taken, but not over much. There is a formal rotation and each party selects a record - most often vinyl but we are format agnostic - and introduces it. Often it is a blind taste test and we are regularly floored by our pals' tremendous good taste or their willful obscurity. Quirky taste is tolerated and a little one-upmanship is de rigueur.
Last Friday evening four of us convened and went at it for a good six hours. Thoroughly rewarding. Bear in mind that this is taking place in Seattle and our average age is, well, late forties. Here's the tune stack from last week:
Donald Fagen - What I Do
Levon Helm - Rain Down Tears
Dio - Mystery
UFO - You Don’t Fool Me
Radio Birdman - Aloha Dan & Steve
Don Dixon - Praying Mantis
Will Rigby - Setting THe Woods On Fire
Mason Profitt - Voice Of Change
Johnny Jenkins - I Walk On Gilded Splinters
The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Tip On In
Barbara Keith (featuring Lowell George) - A Stone’s Throw Away
Bobby Wilson - Deeper & Deeper
Them - Baby Please Don’t Go
Van Morrison - Summertime In England (Live ‘82)
Aztec Camera - Somewhere In My Heart
Calexico - Ballad of Cable Hogue
John Prine - Clay Pigeons
Josh Ritter - Lantern
Sweet Apple - Do You Remember
The Mortals - I Want More
The Saints - Swing For The Crime
Alan Vega - Every 1’s A Winner
Bobby Darin - Long Line Rider
Michael Polnareff - Time Will Tell
Sonic Youth - Expressway To Your Skull
Vetiver - You May Be Blue
Magic Christian - Ride The Light
Chris Spedding - Midnight Boys
Chris Spedding - Hey Miss Betty
The Doors - Roadhouse Blues
The Tornados - Telstar
NRBQ - RC Cola & Moon Pie
Doug Sahm - Wallflower
Ann Peebles - Tear Your Playhouse Down
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Mona/She’s The One (Winterland ‘78)
Uncle Tupelo - Graveyard Shift
Jim Carroll Band - It’s Too Late
Neil Young - Winterlong
Neil Young & Graham Nash - War Song
The Posies - Solar Sister
The Yardbirds - I'm Confused
Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The Stranglers - Golden Brown
Nada Surf - Blonde On Blonde
Furry Lewis - Shake ‘Em Down
Steve Miller Band - Wanna Make The World Turn Around
Son House - Grinning In Your Face
Ben Harper - Roses From My Friends
The Impressions - I’ve Found That I’ve Lost
O.V.Wright - The Trouble Of The World
Manassas - The Treasure
Rodriguez - I Wonder
Caetano Veloso - Jasper
Mandingo - The Cheetah
Fairport Convention - Crazy Man Michael
I hold a monthly music club too
...although not six hours worth, I'm clearly not as hardcore as Bo Doogley.
There's six of us, we kick off at 8pm (having first agreed whether we're getting an Indian or a Chinese takeaway), and then take it in turns to play a record on a theme (e.g. "Games", "Break up songs" and "Weather" have been recent themes).
Then we break for supper, and take turns playing a free choice record.
The evening is usually rounded off with a quick spot of "The Jambalaya Game" - pick a much-covered song, type it into Spotify, and then everyone has to guess who's singing the version.
Always a cracking night. We've been going for two and a half years...
I joined a book club...
...largely to meet people when I moved here. It's great fun - first you get to read all sorts of books you mightn't normally consider, second, you can inflict your taste on others, third, you can have a heated debate and fourth, yet possibly foremost, you can drink lots of beer.
What's not to like?
You're all reminding me
I need to try this series again [though the comedy of embarrassment usually has me watching through my hands ;-)]:
(one other thing I think I saw recently was that some art house cinema chains do a discount for book groups)
One up arrow zinging your way
Any mention of The Book Group is a winner. It's possibly my favourite sitcom ever. It is superbly written and acted, beautifully filmed and directed, the characters are all vivid, and it's very funny. It also stands up to repeated viewings. Series one can be had for peanuts, and includes a very worthwhile commentary from writer/director Annie Griffin and interviews with most of the cast.
Anne Dudek is a comedy goddess in this!
Seesaw
I think both series are available to stream free on www.seesaw.com
In the UK at least
That Youtube link is a portal to 4OD, C4's on demand service and is also free
I would never join
the sort of book group that would consider having me as a member.
I think if I ever had the time, I'd enjoy it.
I ran a book club at a previous workplace...
... and hugely enjoyed it. If you think about it, unless it's some blockbuster, the chances of getting a response to a random cry of "I've just read XXX, anyone want to talk about it?" are pretty minimal. In a book club scenario, there's a whole bunch of you who have not only read the book in question, but only recently, too, and I loved organising it (we almost came to blows over Jonathan Coe's "What A Carve Up".)
And I'm male, if that matters.
I did the same...
... and grew to hate it. I liked the idea of a Book Club, but due to the way the books were chosen, the whole thing got hijacked by a handful of rather dull pseuds who only wanted to read fairly dry, obscure literary fiction. Whenever we tried to cover something a little more populist - we did Ian Fleming's 'Casino Royale', for instance - we'd get a whole load of new and interested people, but they'd be put off by the sniffy comments and generally aggressive demeanour of those in the group who felt this kind of material was beneath them.
Book clubs don't appeal to me....
...for the simple reason that while I'm reading something I don't wish to know what anyone else thinks about it. It's between me and the book. Afterwards I wouldn't mind. I would suggest that in many cases the book club provides an excuse for just doing something we've been doing for ever, which is getting together with friends for a gossip. I can see nothing wrong with that at all.
During or After?
"Afterwards I wouldn't mind."
But that's what book groups do, don't they? Everyone reads the same book and then meets each month to discuss their thoughts once they've finished it. I don't think book groups discuss books as they're being read, at least the ones I'm aware of don't.
Snap!
Great minds... Or is it fools seldom...
Isn't that the point?
I thought the whole idea of a book group was that everyone reads the book beforehand, then get together and have a natter about it, having finished it. Certainly that's the format of the one my FPO goes to (and the one in The Book Group, mentioned above). Like you, I wouldn't want to discuss while I was still reading it.
I quite like the idea of book clubs...
but I wouldn't contribute much as I'd have forgotten what I'd read before I got there.
I would get kicked out
for not doing my homework at the moment. Have really lost the ability to read. I blame the kids......
Homework - exactly
My wife has been doing it for 6 years (loves it; it's a social basically). And I get to cherry-pick the good ones without having that pressure to finish within 6 weeks. Sounds slack to some probably but I don't travel anywhere so it's just in bed that I read (6 pages max).
Re: losing the ability. You need something that will do the heavy lifting. I don't know you of course, but One Day by David someone was such a page-turner I even took it to the loo (instead of Word).
David Nicholls.
I don't want to be in a book club....I want to be in Frazer's food(cooking)club.
Stitch'n'bitch
Book groups are so last century. Knitting circles are all the rage these days. "Knit'n'natter", aka "stitch'n'bitch".
The ladies of Anaheim, Azuza and Cucamonga combine the two, though it's just a genteel cloak for their Hot-rodding acitivies.
Book Club sex scandal
I've always thought of Book Clubs as sexually-charged, salacious affairs, where secrets and lies prosper. Admittedly, I've never been to one.
I went to one once.
They were discussing The Master And Magarita, one of my absolute favorites. No one liked it. My mind boggled.
I went into a near rant about satire, the telling absence of Stalin in the text (which was unpublished in Bulgakov's lifetime), literary score settling, folk tales, the writer as God, Satan and God conspiring against a Godless state to defend imagination, the greatest description of the crucifixion in all literature, and how can anyone possibly not like a book featuring a six foot tall assassin cat? All culminating with a detailed description of its importance in the writing of Sympathy For The Devil.
I was politely asked not to come back.
Well done!
I would have spluttered, "But... but... it's really good."
And they would have said, "Go on then, tell us why it's really good."
And my mind would have gone blank.
Sounds like
An evening with the North West Massive, discussing the merits of Pat Boone's metal album one minute and trying to remember the name of some female emo band the next. The Boathouse might prefer us to stay away as we got very loud.
I thought the rule of a Book Club was
You don't talk about Book Club.
My GLW goes to one and really enjoys it
Unfortunately, one of the people that goes is a bulldog-chewing-a-wasp-while-licking-piss-off-a-nettle cashier at my bank. Such is her power to remove all joy from my very soul, I actively avoid her if I have to go in there. But apparently she's quite nice at Book Club.
Sounds exactly like the book club my FPO attends
I sympathise. It's more of a wine-tasting club with the occasional conversation about a book they happen to have read.
My 80-something neighbours (Mr & Mrs) go to a Recorded Music Group night once a month which sounds much more like it, as far as I'm concerned. Hope to be doing the same when I'm that age. Also, Recorded Music Group would be a great name for a band, don't you think?