Hello everyone,
I came across this subreddit over a week ago, and after perusing the posts, I thought I might as well put a post to see if there are any people out there who would be interested in discussing the books we're reading with each other; I have enough books on the pile beside my bed to be getting through, nor would I feel it to be the best thing to ramshackle ourselves to reading the same book, which I understand as being the point of book clubs. I think it would be far more interesting for us to engage with what the other person is reading, in a back-and-forth manner. I feel conversations would never go stale if we acted in such a way!
To explain something of my reading interests, I think it would be the best thing to give a précis of all the books that I have to read: two biographies, one of Maria Theresa, and the other of Malcolm X; collected essays of Walter Benjamin; a book on the Anthropocene; numerous books on Russian history; one on the Chinese afterlife; Judith Butler's 'Gender Trouble'; and a book on French legal system, though there's a lot more here that I haven't mentioned! Now, I'm not as big of a fiction reader as I was when I was younger, but I'd be more than happy to speak to you about the novels that you're reading, and the intricacies of the plot and the characters therein. So, if you read anything similar, or even dissimilar, I'd be more than glad to hear from you. 😁
As for what I'm reading at the moment, I'm going through Bruno Leipold's 'Citizen Marx', and it's been a stellar read so far. The two books that I've read before that were Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.'s 'Blood Theology: Seeing Red in Body and God-Talk', and W.E.B. Du Bois's 'Black Reconstruction'. What book(s) are you reading at the moment? If you're reading more than one at the moment, and you happen to read copious amounts of books in a given period, you'll have to tell me how you do it! Since whenever I see people reading books in the DOUBLE-DIGITS over the course of a month, I find myself gobsmacked. 😵💫
But, and I think this to be the most important point, these discussions ought to be a means for a meaningful connection to form between us, if you'd be so inclined; not, to be perfectly clear, that that should mean that we ought to great friends right from the get-go. But I feel if all we do is discuss books, and little else, however enjoyable that may be, without any curiosity as to why that person enjoys a certain genre of books, what that says about their values, how it informs their understanding of themselves, their relationships, the world, then I think it would be a very vacuous exercise. I am not saying that our discussions are going to be as fruitful as the correspondence between Cicero and Atticus, but who knows! So, don't be afraid to ask questions about things other than the books we happen to be reading and discussing. I will be truthful, I have not done anything like this before, so there will no doubt be some teething problems, but I am happy to go through them with you, whoever you may be.
If any of that sounds in the slightest bit enticing to you, please, send a DM, and we can go forth from there.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this, and I hope that you've had/are having a great day. 😁