It's Menage Time!
03 November 2008
Back in the halcyon days of my blogging youth, when Citizen Reader was a young and naive Nonfiction Readers Anonymous, we periodically had group book discussions that we called the BOOK MENAGE--short for a trois--because we would read two books and then talk about them in the comments. (Two books + 1 reader = the best kind of disease-free menage ever!)
Well, I think it's high time we did that again.
Are you in? Come on. It'll be fun!
I've got a few ideas about book partnerships. The first set: Tom Bissell's The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam, and Doris Lessing's new novel/family history Alfred and Emily. (Both examine what war does to the families of veterans, even years after the war is over and done with.) Or, we could try John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the new Global Economy and a shorter memoir about work, Reg Theriault's How To Tell when You're Tired. Or, we could try True Crime and read something like Jeanine Cummins's A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath paired with a novel like Michael Connelly's The Black Echo (first in the police procedural Harry Bosch series).
Here's what I see for a timeline: this week, vote* for your favorite set in the comments or email me with your choice at [email protected]. Voting closes at the end of the day on Thursday, Nov. 6 (Then I could announce before this weekend.) Then, a few weeks to read the books, including the Thanksgiving weekend (in a perfect world, I'd have us all give up Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping to read instead), and we'll start the discussion bright and early on Monday, Dec. 1. That way we have something to do during the blah month of November, and we can discuss before we have to turn our attention to the last-minute shopping we have to do because we didn't shop the day after Thanksgiving.
Same deal as last time: vote for your favorite, and invite friends to vote and discuss as well. Everyone who discusses gets their name entered in the drawing for the next Menage's books--once we pick these titles, the lucky reader from our last menage will get her set of books in the mail!
So here we go: 1. Bissell and Lessing; 2. Bowe and Theriault; 3. Cummins and Connelly. Let the menage begin!!
*And unlike the political election, in which both candidates are completely owned by corporate interests,** your vote here really matters!
**I know, I'm a total killjoy. You should still vote tomorrow, of course.