Charter

I have for many years now wanted to join a book club. I have wanted to join one for so many years, in fact, that I have resorted to adding it to my bucket list. And please do not suppose that this is some trivial gesture. There is nothing else on my bucket list. It is just one line and reads something like this:

Many a time have I watched my friends, my relatives, and even my enemies, be called into those happy societies, where ideas flourish, and study ripens into wisdom…

And yet somehow, the universe has conspired against my happiness. Never has the opportunity been presented to me. Like a man bound to the stocks, I have watched the free world of bookclubs pass before my eyes; cold, uncaring, unattainable.

Until now.

I am starting a book club, and taking my destiny into my own hands. It will be a book club unlike any other book club. We will not read books.

Books are the most ponderous form of literature, and from the intelligence I have gathered, most book clubs fail because of them. Books require many nights and a lot of work to get through, and most people just don’t have the time to do that if they are really living life up to the hilt.

Instead, I want a book club that requires nothing but your presence. I want a book club where–instead of reading things in a silo–we all read a thing together, out loud, in the same room, and talk about it during and after. We share and congratulate each other on our ideas, we build upon each other's insights, and we feel ourselves grow. Maybe we are all a bit tipsy, or high, and more in the mood to receive good or bad ideas. Maybe there is a fireplace there, maybe it is the coziest thing you will do this winter. Maybe something you learn will change the way you think, or act, or the course of your life, or the course of history.

Or maybe it will be me alone, reading out loud in the living room, and sharing my thoughts with a small audience of stuffed animals that have been placed in a semicircle around me. I’ll still count it, but I know you won’t let it come to that…

So you are cordially invited to join. I’m trying to get a cadence of either once every two or three weeks. Either Wednesday or Thursday…maybe even alternating days to give people with different schedules a chance to join at intervals.

I’ll have food as bribes and bevvies to help get the ideas flowing. If you ever want to host one, lemme know and we’ll direct the swarm your way. If you have suggestions for readings, send em my way as well.

Encouraged types of things are essays, snippets of essays, poems, snippets/chapters of books, short stories, etc. I’m not sure yet what the sweet spot for length/time is…or what our group could handle, but something around 10-15 minutes per piece feels like it could be a sweet spot (which is roughly 1,300-2,000). Though maybe we are heroes and that is child's play for us…or maybe we buckle even under that weight of words. Only time will tell.

Can’t wait to see you!

–Luke