As I announced in the first post of this year, I have launched a new edition of the Department’s Book Club. My collaborator, Felicity Hand, and myself visited a series of classrooms a couple of weeks ago to present the club, and sent all the students an email message through the BA and MA degree coordinators. The result is that we have now 75 members, from first year to the MA, of whom 25 attended yesterday the first meeting.
Unlike other book clubs, I decided to have first a general meeting, just for members to meet, and begin the task of reading novels right after that. Our first meeting to discuss a novel, then, will be next 6th November, though the corresponding Forum in the Moodle classroom is already open, for those who want to start discussing Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. I have also opened Forums for recommendations and news, and to share what members are currently reading. I have no idea at this point about how many members will actually join the monthly meetings, but in comparison to last year this is simply a spectacular beginning.
In yesterday’s meeting my collaborator and I circulated among the members, who were seating in little groups, as they chose, and asked questions about their preferences as readers and any recommendations they might have. We asked the members to move about and talk to other members, and, to our surprise, they formed little by little a big circle integrating them all. It was nice to have for our use the really big multi-use room in the library’s journal collection section. Also to our surprise, and much amusement, once the club members finished making recommendations, they started discussing the books they hate most. I don’t finish the books I dislike, unless I have to read them for class or research, or I am particularly interested in showing I have read them (even if it’s just to myself). Yet, one of the members spoke of finishing a particularly hideous novel to spite the author and the characters. Ironically, novels mentioned as most hated were the favourite of other members. That happens…
Our Department’s students are about 85% female, and 15% male, excuse my binarism, and, so, it is not surprising that this ratio is reflected in the club’s membership. Yesterday, practically all attendees were women and they chose mostly to discuss and recommend books also by women, or about them. Books by male authors were also recommended, but I noticed that most novels mentioned as highly disliked were by men. For the book club, I have chosen four books by women and two by men, but it is obvious that the one title that has attracted most members to the club is Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo, which is, most definitely, a novel far more likely to please women than men.
We, women readers, have always complained that we have massively read men’s books, but they have not corresponded our interest. The way things are going, it might well be that in one generation men’s books will be secondary to women’s both in number of authors and of readers. You will have noticed that I refer to books, not to fiction, because to my delight a few members mentioned non-fiction titles. This is also an area in which women’s writing features prominently and is attracting many female readers. If non-fiction for young adult manages to grow, as it should, we might see even deeper changes in the preferences of readers for feminine writing (yes, it absolutely exists as an aesthetic category).
The recommendations by the club members were varied, but one thing that we soon noticed was that they were shy to share their pleasure in genre fiction. This is understandable, because not knowing our own preferences for detective fiction (in Felicity Hand’s case) and science fiction (in my case), they must have assumed we only read literary fiction and other literary genres. That has never been the case for me. As a student, I would always keep at hand a book to read for fun, usually a genre novel, but which I could only go on reading after having read for a while for class. I still do the same.
I’m now reading lots of SF for a book I am working on, but I keep others that have nothing to do with it for when I want to read with no pencil in hand. The club members distinguished very carefully between what they read for escapist reasons, they said, and what they read for class. They were wrong to believe that ‘escapist’ genres are something to be embarrassed about, or ashamed of, and we did correct that impression, but the fact is that there are indeed two categories of reading as long as you are a student, or a researcher. The funny thing is that they are interchangeable; that is to say, whenever I work on genre fiction, as I am doing now, I read literary fiction or non-fiction to ‘escape’. I may end up reading, I don’t know, Michael Ondatjee for fun and Stephen King for research.
As a Literature teacher, what I find perhaps most difficult about the book club is, precisely, separating the strategies to read for fun from classroom methodology. I have not programmed the Book Club as I would have programmed a subject, but I have found preparing the questions for debate quite difficult. Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is a book club favourite and it is very easy to find online lists of questions for debate. Initially, I thought I would use them to simplify my job as club runner, but once I read the novel, which I have enjoyed, I decided that I wanted to ask my own questions. To my surprise I ended up writing dozens, which is possibly totally wrong in terms of what a book club needs; yet, with so many members I wanted to open up discussion in as many directions as possible. I had to tell myself as I wrote the questions, that they had to elicit opinion rather than analysis, something not that obvious when you are a Literature teacher used to close reading. That is possibly a good reason why Literature teachers should not run book clubs, but someone has to do it in my Department.
I found myself wondering, for instance, whether calling attention to the author’s reluctance to mention her protagonist Mia Warren’s race is something adequate for a book club, or, rather, for the Literature class. I don’t know, since my own participation in books clubs is just limited to three sessions as a member in one on SF. As regards other aspects of Little Fires Everywhere, I am aware that a book club need not discuss the inner chronology of novels, or the details of the socio-cultural background, or even plot holes, but I have prepared for the club members notes on all of this. Ng’s novel is set in 1996-7, before the club members were born, and I realized that although some allusions are just background colour (like the car models the main characters drive or the music they love), others are more significant. For instance, the wealthy Richardson siblings watch religiously The Jerry Springer Show (1991- 2018), using this syndicated tabloid talk show to get a glimpse of the low-class America that lives far from their carefully regulated planned community.
I had wonderful fun yesterday, talking about books with the 25 Proud Readers of the club (that’s our name!) for almost two hours, and hope to have much more fun with they and all the rest, both online and in person. In contrast, the tea party Felicity and I had planned to inaugurate our new common room in the Departament fell flat. We had invited our colleagues to discuss our research with each other, as we never do that. We may have chosen the wrong date as classes had been cancelled for a sort of miniature fresher’s week (which UAB calls La Comunitària), or simply because our colleagues had other pressing appointments but the fact is that it did not work at all. We are going to try next month again, on a different day of the week now that we have the cookies and the kettle. Perhaps I should not have mentioned research in my invitation, and should have just invited our colleagues to enjoy our mutual company. At any rate, a campus university like UAB, which has no accommodation for teachers, or nearby, has the enormous disadvantage that everyone lives quite far and rushes home as soon as they can. Better luck next time, then.
As for the Book Club, I just hope it thrives. I would be very happy indeed if 20 members manage to read all the books, and join all the sessions. If it works, the next step will be opening it up to all UAB students, and apply for it to be acknowledged officially as an activity for which students may gain at least 3 ECTS (the same for me, there is no way 1 ECTS can compensate for all that work). Bureaucracy knocking on my door…
In the meantime, please, Proud Readers, keep on reading, both for fun and for study.