The Atlantic’s 1book140, and why I don’t do book clubs 8
I’m not one to get involved in book clubs. I’d never even participated in one until the other day, when The Atlantic’s 1book140 group started reading The Blind Assassin yesterday. The main reason, I guess, was that I’d never seen a book club reading a book in which I hadany interest. At all. But! The Blind Assassin was on my reading list! Ever since I read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood and remembered how much I love Margaret Atwood, I’ve kept The Blind Assassin near the top of my pile – I even picked up a copy at the Shreveport Library Book Sale a few weeks ago.
I was excited. Reading a book with a bunch of people sounded like fun, and using Twitter, with its length constraints, sounded like something I was bound to enjoy. The Atlantic even put out a reading schedule so everyone would know what to read and discuss when. So, Tuesday night, I read the first two chapters of the book and added lists in Tweetdeck for #1b140_1 and #1b140_2. Then I waited.
Once a few posts started to appear, I quickly realized that a book club like this one might not be for me. Most of them were just speculation (some of them eye-bleedingly dumb) about what would happen next. What it boils down to is that it’s really, really hard to discuss a book before everyone’s finished reading it. The first two chapters of The Blind Assassin are merely an introduction with bits and pieces of deliberately mysterious information. Discussing this information before you’re far enough into the book to be able to make an educated guess about what might happen next is a waste of time. And, again, many of the tweets were dumb. I’ll be nice, though, and not post any here.
That said, some people had really interesting things to say, even about the first two chapters. The Atlantic has posted some of them on their website. There was even a (too brief) discussion about recursion and how the novel’s various storylines might be tied together. That qualifies as interesting speculation. And, yes, I did participate, but only with one tweet: “The literary prize judges will consider ‘literary and also moral values’ (31). Prob has to do with the story w/in story.” I even got an intelligent reply!
My frustration with dumb tweets isn’t the only reason I’ve decided to quit so quickly. Reading, for me, is a very personal experience, and it’s one I don’t really like to share with others. When I was in college lit classes, I’d usually keep my mouth shut and save my thoughts for papers. I figured I was paying for what the professor had to say, and not students’ opinions. I still feel that way, but most people enjoy participating more than I did. Part of it was that I didn’t want to sound stupid, so I was more confident in making a claim once I’d had time to research and to think about a topic. Most of the people tweeting about The Blind Assassin seem to be rattling on from the tops of their heads rather than thinking about whether their information is correct or if others might be remotely interested in what they have to say. Others are just telling Margaret Atwood, who, for whatever reason, has agreed to participate, how much they love her. It’s like they’re all googley-eyed over a celebrity. The other members of the group probably don’t care.
Once everyone has finished reading the book, I might take a look at the Twitter stream. Since I was going to read along, according to the schedule, I started reading Julia Child‘s My Life in France at the same time. Now that I’ve lost interest in the book club, I’m putting The Blind Assassin back on the shelf, for the time being, to concentrate on Child. Then it’s on to Roberto Bolaño‘s The Savage Detectives, which I’ve been wanting to read for a few weeks. I’ll eventually get back to The Blind Assassin, but it’ll be on my time.
I’m kind of disappointed that I’m evidently not cut out for a group reading experience. Reading, for me, is a solitary activity. Yes, I go to Starbucks almost every day, so I’m surrounded by chattering people, but I can usually focus on the book well enough that their voices drift into the background. It’s like I’m alone and not alone at the same time. A book club on Twitter is kind of analogous in that there’s really no centralized discussion, and members of the group remain relatively anonymous. An intelligent tweet might receive one reply because so much gets looked over in the avalanche of tweets. So you read the book and have a sort of one-sided discussion. Sure, there are people engaged in an actual conversation, in spurts, at least, but the structure of the group is so decentralized that I’m not sure that much of anything worthwhile is coming out of it.
