Book clubs and the CBC
At the risk of blowing my cover entirely, I hereby announce to both my readers that I'll be on CBC Radio One tomorrow in BC talking about the men's book club I cofounded last year. Not having been on radio since winning tickets to see Whitney Houston in 1991 by correctly identifying Carl Perkins as the singer of "Blue Suede Shoes," I'm a little anxious, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.
Apparently Sheryl MacKay recently ran a book club contest that asked for info about group membership, and of the "hundreds of entries," there wasn't a single men-only club. Naturally we stopped scratching ourselves long enough to send in a wee note, and as a result two of us will appear on NXNW after the (ugh) 7 a.m. PST news on Saturday morning. Listen live to streaming audio! (It's unlikely to get podcasted, I'd guess, since we're hardly big-name individuals....)
The 20-minutes we talked will be edited down to about 12, so I'll be interested to see what gets dropped. I did say that as a club we'd especially enjoyed Rob Wiersema's Before I Wake, and that among my favourite writers are Theresa Kishkan and Terry Glavin, so hopefully those comments make it to air. I'm less keen to hear our insults of Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan, but presumably Sheryl will want to provoke some response from listeners!
UPDATE: Sheryl cut out my praise of Theresa Kishkan and Terry Glavin, probably because those were solo rather than club reads, but she did keep our appreciation of Rob Wiersema. It sounded good, I think, but listen for yourself through RealPlayer, or find it on NXNW's main page. My agent's on the other line, I'll catch you later....
Apparently Sheryl MacKay recently ran a book club contest that asked for info about group membership, and of the "hundreds of entries," there wasn't a single men-only club. Naturally we stopped scratching ourselves long enough to send in a wee note, and as a result two of us will appear on NXNW after the (ugh) 7 a.m. PST news on Saturday morning. Listen live to streaming audio! (It's unlikely to get podcasted, I'd guess, since we're hardly big-name individuals....)
The 20-minutes we talked will be edited down to about 12, so I'll be interested to see what gets dropped. I did say that as a club we'd especially enjoyed Rob Wiersema's Before I Wake, and that among my favourite writers are Theresa Kishkan and Terry Glavin, so hopefully those comments make it to air. I'm less keen to hear our insults of Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan, but presumably Sheryl will want to provoke some response from listeners!
UPDATE: Sheryl cut out my praise of Theresa Kishkan and Terry Glavin, probably because those were solo rather than club reads, but she did keep our appreciation of Rob Wiersema. It sounded good, I think, but listen for yourself through RealPlayer, or find it on NXNW's main page. My agent's on the other line, I'll catch you later....
Comments
And neither of you got flustered when the host pulled a "60 Minutes" hardball question out of the blue and asked why you (or rather, we) haven't read any women authors yet.
All in all, a good segment... although I still wished they had interviewed you after the most recent meeting at Bart's, so you could have described how you all ignored the enticements of free beer and Spandex-clad Kokanee Girls to debate the geo-political themes (and plot holes) of The Kite Runner! Sadly, by arriving late, I missed both the pro bono Kokanee and the barstool morality test...
And yeah, I'm not sure how Sheryl got my employer wrong. I liked the show too. To me it sounded a bit choppy, but that's because I know what we said before it got edited down to about half the length. The feedback's been positive.
Lisamm, I'll send you a note about this. It sounds interesting!
I found it tp be very thought-provoking, well-researched, and certainly original. Written by a boy too :-)
A book suggestion is never off-topic! Flaubert's Parrot has been on my radar for a long time, and your Barnes fanaticism is persuasive all on its own :-)
For instance, here's item 2 of 10 in the checklist:
"2. There shall be no more novels about incest. No, not even ones in very bad taste."
I just hope that eventually I can get back to my beloved Barbara Cartland, since apparently she left 160 unpublished manuscripts behind at her death....
Theresa K.
John: no, books aren't a female pursuit, though the worlds of book clubs and bloggers might suggest otherwise. Mind you, there's also something of a gendered distinction between those who read books and those who make money off them.
Theresa: your club sounds terrific. Literate people outside the academy must think we uni types get to spend most of our time talking intensely about books, and I wish it were true. The fact is that we spend much of our time working alone, and dealing with the same kinds of administrivia faced by people working in any other large organization. That's one point I made to Sheryl that wasn't played fully, that a book club gives me the chance to actually be an engaged reader among other engaged readers. Not every day is like a literary conference! (And not every conference is a place I'd want to spend time, either....)