Findings

A combo of two suggestions by: Heidi and by litlove

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

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I’ve never been in a formal reading group, but I’ve been in lots of literature classes. If I were in a group, I think I would prefer to be “assigned” a book, whether by a designated leader or by rotating the decision so each member had a chance to choose a book. There are some books I’d like to read but haven’t had the confidence to take on by myself. And there are others that I’ve never heard of, but would love to be introduced to. For me the purpose of joining a book club would be to take on these kinds of books, rather than the ones I’d stumble upon and devour on my own.

Some of the reading challenges in the blogosphere seem designed to function like book groups, though the face-to-face discussion of the actual book group is more immediate and real than cyberspace. The few challenges I’ve taken part in have gotten me to make a commitment to read certain books, though, and to design a syllabus for myself.

(Funny. Now that I’ve written all this, it occurs to me that church each week, or any Bible studies I’ve been in through the years, have counted as book clubs. They’ve invariably brought the reading to life for me through the discussions. So I guess I have been in a book group before… though for some reason my reflex was to put this into a different category.)

As for the second part of the question, I would only join a book group that wasn’t so demanding as to crowd out other reading for pleasure on my own. Losing that freedom of choice would be a loss of pleasure. But as long as I had time to read other books on my own, I would LOVE to be in a book group. It affects the experience positively to be able to discuss and question together with other readers.

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?

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Without a doubt, I’m tending toward more nonfiction as I get older. It used to be that only stories could hold my interest, but I’m glad to be developing more curiosity instead of less as I get older. I still avoid self-help books, but I’m developing a real love for biography and for certain kinds of analysis and criticism. And I’m reading more poetry.

I have to say too that blogging has sparked a reading renaissance for me. It makes such a difference to have a forum for articulating your responses to a book, and for having clarifying discussion. So although I’m reading proportionately more nonfiction and poetry, I’m not reading any less fiction.

Most of the time I choose books that challenge me or speak to a gap in my knowledge. But I enjoy the occasional feeding frenzy on brain candy, too.

Suggested by: Superfastreader:

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

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Usually I prefer books to movies. The characters and scenes in the movies rarely resemble those in my imaginative experience of the book. Despite its great casting, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe somehow failed to capture the grandeur of Aslan. Gettysburg in its magnificent 4-hour length couldn’t possibly capture the terse, stream-of-consciousness feel of The Killer Angels. And the Jane Austen movies often disappoint me because of their artificial inflation of 21st-century concerns in 19th-century stories. (The Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility is an exception!)

Usually if I see the movie first, I don’t go back to read the book. When I try to do this, I fail: The Bourne Identity, October Sky, Freedom Writers.

Why? Because once the movie images are in my head, I can’t create my own. There’s a short circuit that happens somewhere. This is true even with books I’ve read before watching the movie. The best example of the way movies supplant my own imagination is The Lord of the Rings. I’d read Tolkien’s books, and loved them. But I can no longer access my own pre-movie vision. The movies did such a great job of picturing it all that my mind goes to scenes from them. The movies have become a mental gatekeeper.

Interesting fact: this is true of home movies and pictures as well. There are “memories” I have that on closer examination turn out to be pictures out of the photo album or old family movies, rather than my own memories. I know this because they’re not pictured from the inside looking out, but with myself as a character alongside other characters. Weird, huh?

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don’t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack?

Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?

I wouldn’t say my reading tastes change. But my reading quantity sure does. I’ve been laboring through Winesburg, Ohio for about a week now simply because it’s become possible to read it outside, on the swing, and I find myself setting it aside after a few pages to drink in the sights and sounds: color at last; my kids playing; my dog yapping annoyingly because she wants me to throw the frisbee.

I consider this phenomenon to be my way of emerging from hibernation. Winter in the Northeast seems to go on forever, and I escape it by retreating mentally into the wonderfully varied universe of stories. Now I can come out of the confines of my four walls, my imagination, the covers of my books, and breathe deep of the pollen-laden air.

Suggested by Nithin:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Uggh. This would be one of my dirty little secrets… When I come across a word I don’t know, nine times out of ten I just blunder on without looking it up. I’ve always felt guilty about this, having inherited books from real readers with unfamiliar words underlined, and definitions jotted in the margins.

I excuse my slothfulness by saying I’m “deriving the meaning from context.” But when I’m unable to tell the meaning of a specific word from context, I leave it as a little empty space in my mind and keep going. Sometimes I even broadcast my ignorance by using the word later in conversation because it sounds right, or by finding it in Scrabble or Boggle, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten caught… which tells me there are a lot of other Vocabulaphobes out there!

(I’m not Catholic, but maybe this is what it feels like right after you go to confession…)

• Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
• Turn to page 123.
• What is the first sentence on the page?
• The last sentence on the page?
• Now . . . connect them together….
  (And no, you may not transcribe the entire page of the book–that’s cheating!)

Wendell Berry’s The Memory of Old Jack has this as the first sentence of page 123: “The death of the old doctor did not change her life — a fact that the town found more enduringly worthy of notice and comment than any change it might have made.”

And the last sentence is, “One walked between two huge mock orange bushes inside the gate and emerged deep in flowers.”

• Option 1: “She” murdered “the old doctor.” Thus between the first sentence and the last, the townspeople of Port William have bumped her off too, and she’s buried in a cemetery filled with flowers.
• Option 2:  The “old doctor” was her husband, and “she,” quite sufficient in herself, continued to live in her cottage inside an Edenic garden “deep in flowers.” It was so filled with flowers that the townspeople talked about it all the time. Finally they sent photos to Organic Gardening, and the town became famous.
• Option 3: “The death of the old doctor” really did affect “her,” monstrously, privately, behind closed doors. This is why the townspeople didn’t know it. Until one day she went berserk in the town square, the entrance to which was bordered by “two huge mock orange bushes inside the gate and [from which one] emerged deep in flowers.” Who’d have expected it, in such a peaceful pastoral setting?

Disclaimer: one of these is perilously close to the actual story… can you guess which one?