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.
Fill out this google form to answer a few quick questions about your schedule preferences and reading interests, and join the mailing list via the form at the bottom of this page to receive updates about future meetings.
UPCOMING MEETINGS:
Brooke Lanier Fine Art
820 S. 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA.
Friday, September 20th at 4 pm
Friday, October 4th at 5 pm
Friday, October 18th at 5 pm
Reading for September 20th:
Poppyseed, by Ramona Ausubel
This is the 2nd story in the book A Guide to Being Born, a collection of stories which is organized by the phases of life. Everyone liked "Safe Passage," which is the first story. I ordered 6 copies of this book for group members to purchase at Brickbat Books. It is also available via Kindle and Audible, so the reading is accessible for visually impaired people.
Reading for October 4th:
The Fluted Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Y'all asked for October horror stories, so here you go! This piece is part of the collection Pump Six and Other Stories, which I highly recommend. Several of the stories in it were nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. The entire series does an excellent job of world-building, describing morally complex characters from different strata of society in a dystopian future. This particular story centers around a young musician whose patron controls every aspect of her life.
Reading for October 18th:
TBD. We could read another story from "A Guide to Being Born," or if you want to read more by Paolo Bacigalupi, I recommend "Yellow Card Man," which won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It is 16,500 words. I can't find it online, so we'd need to buy a book which costs about $10.
FUTURE READINGS:
We will be alternating reading essays, short stories, and poetry. Feel free to comment below with suggestions!
"Against Access" by John Lee Clark
Essay published online in McSweeny's and in print in the collection of essays Touch the Future. Discussion date TBD
The author of this essay is a DeafBlind man and challenges concepts of accessibility that are devised by non-disabled people. He's a leader of the Protactile movement, a modification of ASL developed by DeafBlind people which includes touching as part of the conversation.
"When the word access comes up, it usually refers to tools or avenues that complement the sensory experience people already enjoy. Captions for movies, TV shows, and videos are excellent examples." In it, Clark poses some excellent questions about what makes the best, most useful form of translation, including examples of objective vs. subjective ASL and Protactile translators. This essay is very thought-provoking and has guided me while I recently wrote some audio descriptions of the show "Slow Motion" at Grounds for Sculpture.
I highly recommend the book, which I read as an e-book via the Philadelphia Public Library's Libby app using iPhone VoiceOver dictation software to turn it into an audiobook. The print copy is only available in hardcover and is $25.
At least one of our October selections will be a horror story.
Horror story collections recommended by the group:
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (print only)
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson, who wrote scripts for the Twilight Zone.
I will also be investigating options for stories that are available online.
PREVIOUS READINGS:
August 28th "Safe Passage" by Ramona Ausubel. This proved so popular that group members requested to read more of her work. We'll be reading other stories from the story collection, A Guide to Being Born.
September 6th Wassily Kandinsky Concerning the Spritual in Art
is available online, and I've also ordered a couple of copies at Brickbat Books for those who wish to read a printed book.
Written in 1910, this collection of short essays revolutionized thinking about modern art and has impacted generations of artists.
It's a short book, and there are lots of illustrations. It is broken into two parts, "About General Aesthetic," and "About Painting."
We will be discussing first two essays in the second section, “About Painting,” which are “The Psychological Working of Color” and “The Language of Form and Color.”These introduce ideas about the psychological impacts of color, the interplay between form and color, composition, harmony, and discord. Throughout the whole book, there is a fascination with the relationship between visual art and music.
For comparison to Kandinsky's ideas about color memory, read the brief essay below.
September 6th: Josef Albers, Color Recollection – Visual Memory
a brief essay from The Interaction of Color
"If one says “Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.
Even when a certain color is specified which all listeners have seen innumerable times—such as the red of the Coca-Cola signs which is the same red all over the country—they will still think of many different reds.
Even if all the listeners have hundreds of reds in front of them from which to choose the Coca-Cola red, they will again select quite different colors. And no one can be sure that he has found the precise red shade.
And even if that round red Coca-Cola sign with the white name in the middle is actually shown so that everyone focuses on the same red, each will receive the same projection on his retina, but no one can be sure whether each has the same perception.
When we consider further the associations and reactions which are experienced in connection with color and the name, probably everyone will diverge again in many different directions.
What does this show? First it is hard, if not impossible, to remember distinct colors.This underscores the important fact that the visual memory is very poor in comparison with our auditory memory. Often the latter is able to repeat a melody heard only once or twice. Second, the nomenclature of color is most inadequate.Though there are innumerable colors—shades and tones—in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 color names."
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