Let’s face it:
The worst thing about book clubs is the books themselves. I mean, having to read? On top of everything else? Even as an avid reader, I have historically considered my engagement with book clubs more a matter of allegiance to the friends who roped me into them than to any desire (or time) I had to read their selections.
But, I’m also strangely grateful for their selections.
Bleak Reading Habits
As a one-time scholar of 19th-century literature and a current professor of Media Studies, my taste in books has transitioned from double-decker social problem novels to contemporary non-fiction on… social problems. I suppose you could say my reading habits dwell on the bleak side. And left to book lists of my own devising, I would probably never get a sense of what novelists or poets have been getting up to on the page since 1950, or what the big deal about A Visit from the Goon Squad is.
This is just to say, sometimes my friends give me homework and I’m glad.
But though I know I might be alone on this point—after all, I never left school, and that’s weird—I’d still like to pass on the gift, so I’ll make you a deal: instead of homework, I’m giving you Detention.
In Detention Book Club, you don’t have to do the homework—you don’t have to read the books—but you do have to come to Detention.
Detention Book Club runs in three Month Cycles.
Monday January 13th we will be meeting virtually to discuss Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. For those of you who like facebook invites here’s a link. For everyone else sign up here.
