Scenes from a Book Club
The Sacred Pursuit of Literature
This comic appears in the latest issue of The Southampton Review. Any resemblance to actual people in my book club is purely coincidental.
Here are all the books we’ve read so far for book club:
WAR AND PEACE, Leo Tolstoy JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, Susanna Clarke THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY, Flannery O'Connor DEMONS, Fyodor Dostoevsky THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, Charlotte Bronte THE POWER AND THE GLORY, Graham Greene EXHALATION, Ted Chiang FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley DRACULA, Bram Stoker JAYBER CROW, Wendell Berry THE MOVIEGOER, Walker Percy TILL WE HAVE FACES, C.S. Lewis THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, C.S. Lewis BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, Evelyn Waugh MASTER AND MAN, Leo Tolstoy THE ROAD, Cormac McCarthy PROJECT HAIL MARY, Andy Weir GATES OF FIRE, Steven Pressfield FATHER ELIJAH, Michael O'Brien A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, Walter Miller THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, T. H. White A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, John Kennedy O'Toole
I’m proud to say I’ve finished them all.
You’ll notice a strong classics, Catholic, and fantasy/sci-fi influence due to the demographics of the readers in the group (mostly intellectually curious Catholic dads—book nerds, in other words).
My favorite read, believe it or not, was WAR AND PEACE. It was also the most challenging to complete: 1,200 plus pages of family drama, unrequited love, and Napoleonic warfare. As the song from the musical goes, “It's a complicated Russian novel—Everyone's got nine different names.”
JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, EXHALATION, and THE ROAD were rereads for me—excellent books, all three. I’ll push for the group to read Susanna Clarke’s PIRANESI (and any other novels she happens to publish) in the future.
I fell in love with MASTER AND MAN, a Tolstoy short story, while reading A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN by George Saunders. Now I think twice before hitching up my horse and sled in a blizzard to close a real estate deal…
As for apocalyptic books, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ is a highlight of the genre, with barren brutality that approaches THE ROAD. Both are leavened with a shred of hope for humanity. I read THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler in another book club; it felt terrifyingly prescient. I’d much prefer to read about an apocalypse than to live in one.
DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN were engaging Halloween reads. Much deeper books than the pop culture tropes they’ve become.
And I will read anything by poet farmer Wendell Berry: an essay, a poem, a novel, an anti-AI tirade, a grocery list. He’s like a Tolstoy character, brimming with ideas and ideals about living despite the less-than-idealistic world around him.
Though we haven’t fought over footnotes in real life, there’s a real debate in our group over reading modern fiction versus focusing solely on the classics.
I’m more of a literary omnivore—I will devour any book in front of me—but I always enjoy being forced to read a difficult book from a past generation that I wouldn’t otherwise touch.
Finally, CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES was the funniest book we’ve read. And the title would make a great name for a book club.
War and Peace is a bear of a book. I still have my Father's copy from the war when they gave classicscto Navy personnel. They say it was the first book I pulled off the bookshelf as a baby ...
Have you ever read Anna Karinina?
I LOVE your group’s book selections! Need to find a group with this taste. Highly recommend Piranesi. So glad others read Til We Have Faces—it’s my favorite of Lewis’s. Project Hail Mary is such a marvelous and joyful read. I’ve not read any Tolstoy, but you and Austin Kleon have convinced me to rectify that. I’ve just ordered a copy of Anna Karenina. I wonder whether you might like Robert Jackson Bennett—the Ana & Din series, the Divine Cities trilogy, or the Locklands trilogy.