The Sweatshop of Love book club was last night. It was lovely to hang out and talk books with some nice knitters, including Doc Scooter, but I am glad that book is over. Next month we are reading When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. I am THRILLED. Love Ishiguro. Love.
Big A and I are starting a book club of our own.
We have been having trouble talking about books together, and talking about books is one of my favorite things about dating a writer/reader. He read Oscar Wao a while ago and then I read it and he was all excited to talk about it. I thought we had good discussions and plumbed the depths of the book, but apparently he found the discussion lacking. He wants more picking apart and how will you use this as a writer.Specific examples that you will steal. When did he lose the voice…things like that.
This phenomenon also occurred with Poor Things, Bluebeard, and really whatever else we both read. I didn’t realize how he was growing slowly unsatisfied with these discussions, but I did know that I was growing irritated by his pedantic tendencies. This came to a head when he started to read A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. I loved this book. Loved. But I read books for pleasure and writerly insights and I don’t want to lose either of those components. I don’t look at a book and pick it apart chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence. I read the whole book (usually) and look at its arc, its characters, anything that struck me about language or voice. I don’t think of these elements as something I can ape or steal but I do believe that as a writer it is easy to sound like what you are reading, so I do feel influenced holistically by my reading choices. I can still get lost in books. Sadly, Big A cannot any more. I really don’t want to lose that.
So Big A reads the first two chapters of A Gate at the Stairs and wants to talk about it. Two freaking chapters. He wants to know why I think the main character is well drawn, because clearly she isn’t. She listens to Sleater Kinney and that annoyed him. We never get a good sight of her. Blah blah blah. READ CHAPTER THREE! I swear! Maybe there is a sight of her in chapter three. I, frankly, do not remember. I read this in SEPTEMBER. ARG! And as irritated as I am with him not reading the whole book and wanting to talk about it like he did, he is just as irritated with me for not remembering these details from the first 40 pages and being able to have a strong opinion on them. Not having a strong opinion is REALLY not my problem, but what happens is that I form a strong opinion on how Big A is crazy and I need to leave the room for a while and contemplate the Nile or something. Not helpful.
The thing is he doesn’t finish books very often because he gets bored. I would get bored too, poring over sentences a dozen times and picking apart every little thing. And though he acknowledges this is part of what makes him bored with perfectly engaging books, he thinks this is the way a writer should read. I disagree. But he thinks I should be more specific in my critiques. A lot more specific. I can do that, but we need to be on equal footing.
Hence the Shmook Club. We are going to read To Kill a Mockingbird for February. Why TKAM? Well we have two copies of it, so we can both read it at once. Big A has never read it and I haven’t read it since high school or maybe college. It is short ( I have a lot on my book docket and he has the aforementioned problems finishing things.).
We are going to read deliberately, to suck the marrow out of it, so to speak, and then practice having the kind of discussion about literature that satisfies both of us. I know this is a little excessive, perhaps, but I really love talking about books and I love doing it with Big A. It is one of my favorite things about our relationship and kind of on the sly, neither of us was getting what we needed. Not that this was about to break us up or anything, it’s not like a deal breaker but it is something I am willing to put a little work into. If it someday gets harder for us to communicate because of time or space or the pressures of work or children or illness, I want to be very very good at this, at least. Maybe I am being silly, but it feels like a good idea that couldn’t hurt and might help in the long run.