It is with great excitement that I invite you to participate in a new book club!
Hosted by Bo, Saintseester and myself, A Dark and Stormy Book Club is meant to provide the community of traditional book clubs, but without the hassle of trying to find meeting times convenient to everyone. We’re taking advantage of blogging and podcasting to make this book club more dynamic and fun and, well, easier on everyone’s schedule (not to mention allowing for a great deal of, shall we say, geographical flexibility). You can sign in to the blog or listen to the podcast whenever you want without having to clear a space in your schedule or find a babysitter.
Once a month, one of your hosts will suggest a book for investigation and post it at A Dark and Stormy Book Club. A link to purchase the book will be embedded in the post, too, if you feel you’d like to add the selection to your personal library. We’ll allow several weeks to read the book, then we’ll host a radio show podcast of discussion about it. Eventually, we’ll open the discussion to outside callers so that you can join in. How cool is that?
After the podcast is recorded, we’ll open the book up for discussion in the comments section. There, we’ll post discussion questions and offer up an opportunity for everyone to chime in and post their thoughts and comments. Don’t forget that your hosts are teachers and writers in real life, too – feel free to ask questions, if you like, and we’ll do our best to answer them for you.
Our inaugural book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy and, while it’s not a happy, feel-good kind of read, it IS one that will inspire a lot of good thinking and discussion. Please join us – it’s going to be a lot of fun.
I have read The Road, and previously, either in a comment on someone else’s blog, or in my old blog, said I thought it was pretty muchy a pot-boiler. This comment came, comes, from a Cormac McCarthy fan.
However, that doesn’t make your book club any less a fine idea.
Gerry, tell me why you think so, please – and do you think you’ll be joining us in the reading?
I’ll likely not read any following comments that delve too much into the book (because I’m about to read it), but a potboiler isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is such a thing as a really good cheeseburger, after all.
Ooh, I’ll have to check it out, for sure. I’ve always longed for internet books clubs. I’m not a huge McCarthy fan (by which I mean that I’ve always gotten bored before finishing his books, though a friend tells me that I MUST read early McCarthy for its Faulknerian delights) but I’ll see if I can get my hands on The Road. Might be difficult, I’m moving — if not, I’ll try to remember to check back for September’s book.
So. Excited. My first book club!
Hmmm. Maybe I need to make a little sidebar graphic for our “charter members” – the ones who join us during these first few months as we get underway.
Yay! I’m in for shizzle! (Just have to finish the big HP first)
I’m so lame, I don’t know how podcasts work, how to call in, etc. Strange, since I download mucho musico to my iPod.
If I can find the book around here I’ll participate, it may be at my other home.
I responded to your query about my opinion of The Road on my blog as a response to your comment there.
The cool thing about the blogtalk radio site, is you can just click on the play button and listen to the recording right there in your browser. You can also download the file and then import the file into iTunes.