I am starting a club for readers. It’s along the lines of a book club, but without the daunting pressure to read the same book as everyone else, in the same amount of time, and then comment on it in witty and insightful fashion. Let’s call this a book club for underachievers who still like to read.
The basic premise: you show up with a book you’ve read recently. Any book at all. If you’re not a book reader, it doesn’t have to be a book: it can be a National Geographic article, a poem, a blog you printed out, whatever. But you have to bring something, and you have to share it with everyone else.
During Readers’ Club, everyone gets a chance to stand up and wax enthusiastic about their pick. A brief synopsis of the book will suffice. You can tell us why you like it, and maybe someone will have a question, and then they’ll become intrigued about your book, and then…
This leads me to the second part of Readers’ Club, which is that you give the book (or magazine, or blog, or whatever) away to someone else. And you never get it back.
The energy of passing books around is so powerful. I used to hoard my books as if I was trying to start my own personal library. I’ve always been a reader, so over time I collected what amounted to about ten giant packing boxes of books. I know this because I had to pack them so many times. I moved around a lot, and lugged ten boxes of very heavy books from one place to the next. At one point I shipped them all cross-country from Washington DC to Seattle.
I found it very satisfying to move into a new apartment and savor the unpacking of my books, stacking them up as testaments to my reading achievements. Sometimes I would just stand by the bookshelf and tilt my head to one side as I proudly made note of how many novels I had read over the years. I think that a part of me felt like my bookshelf was a direct reflection of my personality. As if a stranger could take stock of my library of books and know me intimately, without any actual effort on my part to make an impression.
But something didn’t feel quite right. I was simplifying in other areas of my life, and constantly shedding belongings. I prided myself on my ability to live light, at one point abandoning most of my things in storage and spending the next six months hopping from one house sitting arrangement to the next. I traveled a lot, and got used to surviving with just what I could carry in my luggage. But still, I had this laborious collection of books that, quite frankly, I would probably never read again.
One day, I experienced a powerful shift in my thinking. I realized that this collection of books was really just a burden. It wasn’t a real part of me. And let’s be honest, if I ever did decide to give one of them a second read, I could pick it up at a used bookstore in a moment. So I decided to get real about my books. I brought them all to Green Apple bookstore, and I traded them in for credit.
From that moment, I have never owned a book for longer than it takes me to read it. When I am done with a good book, I give it away to someone who I think might like it. If I’m not crazy about the book, I just put it back into circulation at Green Apple. Either way, I try to keep that book’s energy alive. And on that note, I rarely buy new books. Why kill a tree? When you read a used book, you are sharing in an experience that everyone else who has ever touched that book has already had. It’s a magical concept, really.
Which brings me back to the Readers’ Club. You bring a book; you give it away; you get a different book. It’s a lovely idea, isn’t it?
