Our first reading assignment for 1984 will be for chapters 1-4 and will be posted on Thursday, 1/8.
Why a book club? Why now?
In the era of the soundbite, the clip, and the algorithm, the written word is more important than ever.
What is the goal of the book club?
The goal of the Great American Book Club is simple: to understand the American Dream. What is it? Does it exist? Is our country great? Was it? Could it be? For this book club we will be reading both fiction and nonfiction, but for now we are just doing fiction. Anything and everything is fair game to read and help us understand ourselves, maybe even international lit if we really want to get freaky.
How does this work?
I’m still working out the optimal format, but it won’t be any long-winded English class stuff, more just a set of observations regarding the text and how it ties into the larger themes American identity that we are exploring. We’ll cover a lot more than just that, but we’ll always try to keep that in the back of our minds.
The mission of the book club is to be a public forum, one that allows us to grapple with complicated ideas in a way that fosters discussion instead of division. I hope you all can join me in creating this community.
So what do I do now?
Subscribe, spread the word, and get reading!
