Upcoming Readings for Low-Stakes Book Club
- Brooke Lanier
- Oct 4, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 10
Have you been wanting to join a book club, but it's too much of a commitment? Welcome to Low-Stakes Book Club, where we only read short stories, essays, and poetry! Miss a
meeting? That's ok, we'll see you next time. Don't like the reading? Don't worry, it's not that many pages, and next meeting we're discussing something different. I'm making an effort to select readings that are available online unless otherwise elected by the group. If we decide to purchase a book, I will make an order via Brickbat Books so that we can support a local small business.
Join the mailing list via the form at the bottom of this page to receive updates about future meetings.
Friday, January 16th
NO BOOK CLUB. I am going to be visiting my family in Colorado for a few days, meeting my new nephew.
Sunday, January 25th from 1-3 pm
Hannah and Ciro are having our first Book Club Baby! Let's celebrate by giving them a little library. Please bring a gift of your favorite children's book, preferably purchased from a locally-owned book store. We will serve bagels, fruit, tea, and coffee. Please RSVP below.
Friday, February 6th, 5-6 pm: "The Overcoat"
We're going to read Nikkolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" since we have some time to mull it over. Dostoyevski and Nabokov lauded it as exceptionally influential and one of the greatest Russian short stories, so that's good enough for me.
Please RSVP below.
Ciro and Hannah recommended George Saunders' curated collection of Russian short stories "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain." Saunders incorporates analysis of the stories, asking readers to consider the writers' decisions, and the structure of stories, and the ways people read. I've been enjoying it, and we might read it together as a group in the future.
Friday, February 20th, 5-6 pm: "The Open Boat"
Click link below for pdf, audiobook, and RSVP links.
"The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane (1898) is based on the author's experience surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida. Someone who visited my studio and saw all of my paintings of dilapidated ships recommended it.
PREVIOUS READINGS and MEMBER SUGGESTIONS:To see what we've read before and check out what other members suggest, visit this page.
Planning for winter: Who's interested in a field trip?
I'm looking for a good reading or two about notorious painter James McNeil Whistler's libel lawsuit against the critic John Ruskin and/or the debacle surrounding his masterpiece/failed commission "The Peacock Room." This might be a two-parter, since he was a real character as well as a revolutionary figure in art history.
Upon seeing Whistler's 1875 painting "Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket," Ruskin wrote, "I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” The painting was ahead of its time an presaged abstract expressionism and color field painting. Whistler won the libel suit after an interesting discussion of the artistic process, aesthetics, and skill, among other things. However, the jury awarded him a single farthing and didn't not require Ruskin to pay Whistler's legal fees. As a result, Whistler was rendered destitute despite his victory.
The Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art houses "The Peacock Room," as well as a wonderful collection of Whistler's paintings alongside Asian art and ceramics. Several "Nocturne" paintings are in the Freer, but the painting above is in The Detroit Institute of Art.
I was planning this field trip for the fall, but my schedule has gotten complicated, so let me know if you're interested in joining us in the winter.
Have you read They Were Horrible Cooks?