A spectacular failure and a huge success.
Aug. 20th, 2013 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riselikelions15 months ago, Pomona and I did a book club over the summer. It got precisely zero responses once we started it. There was an email chain that went nowhere. Despite our efforts, the club was more or less a secret.
Analytically, the experiment was a miserable failure.
Despite that, I look back at what we wanted to read and what I ended up reading and I think of it as a wonderful success.
The idea was to spend the summer getting back into books or taking a good hard look at the stuff we knew we had blinders for, mostly fantasy and science fiction. Those were holes and in the fifteen months since, I think I filled some of those gaps. The plan was to read more Pratchett, Gaiman, Faulkner, Hammett, Gibson and everything else.
Today, I own at least eight books by Terry Pratchett, three by Gaiman, five by Faulkner, five by Hammett and four by Gibson. Many of the books I "wanted to get to," I got to, likely by the momentum of the idea. I'd wanted to get to Distant Star, How I Became A Nun, The Prince Of Mist and C: A Novel. I did. Each of them had an effect on me that I can delineate. I'm now hugely enthusiastic for Pratchett and now proudly familiar with Hammett, Gibson, Faulkner and Gaiman. I even went to see Gaiman on his final signing tour this year.
I forgot about this failed attempt and reviewing it makes me smile. We came in with an idea and even if it didn't succeed in building or maintaining any kind of a community, the goal of reading more, at least on my end was an unqualified success.
Analytically, the experiment was a miserable failure.
Despite that, I look back at what we wanted to read and what I ended up reading and I think of it as a wonderful success.
The idea was to spend the summer getting back into books or taking a good hard look at the stuff we knew we had blinders for, mostly fantasy and science fiction. Those were holes and in the fifteen months since, I think I filled some of those gaps. The plan was to read more Pratchett, Gaiman, Faulkner, Hammett, Gibson and everything else.
Today, I own at least eight books by Terry Pratchett, three by Gaiman, five by Faulkner, five by Hammett and four by Gibson. Many of the books I "wanted to get to," I got to, likely by the momentum of the idea. I'd wanted to get to Distant Star, How I Became A Nun, The Prince Of Mist and C: A Novel. I did. Each of them had an effect on me that I can delineate. I'm now hugely enthusiastic for Pratchett and now proudly familiar with Hammett, Gibson, Faulkner and Gaiman. I even went to see Gaiman on his final signing tour this year.
I forgot about this failed attempt and reviewing it makes me smile. We came in with an idea and even if it didn't succeed in building or maintaining any kind of a community, the goal of reading more, at least on my end was an unqualified success.
I read the books I wanted to and now I'm still reading more. I'll count that as a win for me. I want to do this more often. But maybe this time with a smaller scope and two books tops. Say, Moby-Dick and Dune. This time, I'll do it on Twitter and see if I can get any bites. Maybe, maybe not. But I'm reading lots and lots again and looking back, I realize I have this abject failure to thank.
