A Compass (of Sorts)

Book Club

A few of my friends and I are starting a book club. The book we are reading is The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. It is a character driven non-fiction story about the individuals who bet against the economic collapse of 2008 and made billions, and the financial system that developed over the last twenty years that made such bets possible.

Now that the “book” part is covered, let’s get to the “club” aspect. This is not a book club as it is usually understood. My friends and I don’t live anywhere near each other, and we are not so optimistic to think that even skyping and conference calling will work. We figured that the best way to keep us reading and interacting on the topic of books would be to start a thread and have people comment when time permits.

There are a few advantages to this approach. First, we can’t meet up when we don’t live near each other, so we have little choice. Second, an open forum across the entire month will allow people to contribute thoughts on their own time when they are fresh rather than waiting for a preset meeting to roll around. Third, an open forum book club will help expand the discussion to include any and all interested readers, whose opinions will only help to facilitate discussion. Finally, since there is no face-to-face contact, there can be more of a rolling membership. If you don’t like the book, don’t read it! Join us next month! Simple as that.

I will be the first to admit that this is a rough process right now. Any suggestions are welcome on how to make this work best. What is the best forum for the discussion? How should we decide on future books? Should we pursue gchat or skype options? The list goes on… But I hope I speak for everyone when I say that the purpose of this rolling membership book club should be to get us to not only read more good books, but think critically about them and value discussion and debate on their arguments.

Happy reading!