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Book ClubsGauging interest for potential book clubs
On some of the other recent threads here, I mentioned a couple books I want to read and would be open to facilitating a book club for.
Please comment on this post which of the books you're interested in and can commit to reading. Any comments or questions about how the book club will operate are also welcome. If at least three other women want to read and discuss the book(s), expect the book club to start in February.
I'll decide on a finalized schedule and let participants know after seeing how many other women are interested in each book. If there's enough interest in both books, the book clubs will run separately.
description from bookshop.org "Ursula K. LeGuin meets The Road in a post-apocalyptic modern classic of female friendship and intimacy.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.
As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl--the fortieth prisoner--sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground."
description from bookshop.org "What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society's condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children--at will or due to economic or other circumstances.
The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic. Using famous examples such as Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, and Maria Montessori as well as fictional ones like Anna Karenina and the many roles of Meryl Streep, and interrogating modern trends like "momfluencers," Gómez Urzaiz reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women."
Depends on whether there's anywhere halfwayish through the book that offers both /1/ a logically sensible stopping point in the narrative, and /2/ enough perspective on the overall story arc to allow coherent discussion of it.
Some stories I've read—especially ones that repeatedly scene-cut between different narrators—have plenty of these potential waypoints; others have had such a seamless narrative that I couldn't bear the thought of slamming the book shut partway through and cliffhanger-ing for a whole week.
@nomenarewomen, You read the book not that long ago—Do You remember whether there were any feasible stopping points?
yeah, I was going to ask @nomenarewomen about that but you beat me to it! I haven't gotten a chance to look at the book yet and see if it has a good midway point like you mentioned. it also depends on the writing style, since some books are fairly quick reads but others are more dense and take longer, even if the page counts are similar.
it might be that this one is short and quick enough that it's more suitable to discuss the whole book at once, but I'm not sure at this point.
Hiya, so the book has three main sections: the part where the women are in the cage pp.1-55, the partafter the cage pp.57-135, and the part where the protagonist is on her own ending on p.188. The narrative style is fast as the only breaks between sections are the ones listed above. You could stop in the middle of the book but it's hard to pick a point as there is no natural break. I think if possible it would be best to read the whole book but as long as you've got a decent way through the second section, then that could also potentially work.
thanks for the insight! based on that, it looks like it's better to discuss the entire book at once, so that's what will happen for this book club.