Friday Book Review: The Guide by R.K. Narayan

I've been thinking about restarting the evening book club a lot lately, which has made me remember the last one I led. R.K. Narayan's The Guide was the first book we read together, and it remained one of the best discussions we had--mostly because the group members couldn't come to a consensus on what happened. If you read my review, you might see why we had trouble agreeing. (I, by the way, take the saint position.)

The Guide opens with Raju leaving prison. He goes to the barber, gets a haircut and shave, and has no idea what to do afterward. He was once India’s most famous tour guide. He was then the famous companion of the dancer Nalini. But having burned both of these bridges and defamed himself, his prospects are limited and his options few. Because he has nowhere else to go, Raju takes up residence at the local temple, because no one can really force him to leave.

The Best of 2011 (a Late Retrospective)

Part of what I've been doing for my month of July posts is looking through my drafts of posts I'd started but never finished and working to make those presentable. Imagine my surprise when I ran across my never posted "best of 2011" list--a full six and a half months after I usually post it. And I saw why I hadn't posted it: I had only written an outline. Sorry, folks. I suppose it's as timely now as it ever was...

For the past several years, I've begun the new year with a retrospective of the last one, telling you, faithful readers, what the best and worst was, at least as I saw it. However, when I think about 2011, in many ways it seems like a cultural wasteland. I keep a log of all the books I read in a given year, and it pains me to say that I cut in half the number of books read in 2011 from 2010 (though "number of books read," I'll admit, isn't an indicator of much). There are some mitigating factors here: 1) Doctor Zhivago and Crime and Punishment are both longer books, which have a tendency to slow me down. 2) The amazing number of books (at least for me) that I read in 2010 was partly a result of the book reviewing gigs I had then but have since relinquished. So...my 2011 list isn't as interesting. And instead of trying to force a top five model as I have in the past, I'm only going to mention the things I deem worthy, rather than striving to reach an arbitrary, prescribed number. So without further ado (though not necessarily commentary), here are my picks for 2011.

"Share the Load!"

As promised, here are some of the benefits of opening the book club to other discussion leaders. Some of these benefits were expected, but many of them were not. Here is a list with some explanation:

No Book Club Leader Is an Island

In my last post in this series I shared the initial e-mail I sent out to potential book club members outlining a "book enthusiasts club." From the beginning I said that I would handle administration, but I also said that I would choose the readings. This was fine at first because 1) I had a backlog of readings already chosen for this purpose, and 2) I was always ready to foist my reading recommendations on others. (I'm known in the book club as "the raver.") But I quickly encountered the enemy that always dogs the steps of the overambitious: burnout.

Book Club Boundaries

As mentioned in my last post, the book-enthusiasts group I started in college served as the basis of the reading group I started at work. This is the e-mail I sent out when I first proposed the group:

A Low-Commitment Book Club

In college some friends and I had the idea for a new kind of book club. But before I get into that, the backstory.

I wrote earlier about book clubs, that more people say they want to be in a book club than actually want to be in a book club. I discovered this truth in college. Of course I knew there were crazy people out there who didn't like books; I could understand that they didn't want to be in a book club. But why would people who claim to like books sit out of a book club?

Book Clubs and Theories of Time

A useful tool of thought that I learned in one of my college classes is first-order and second-order desires. A first-order desire is a want ("I want pie"). A second-order desire is a wanting to want ("I want to want to go running"--a second-order desire I've expressed many, many times). What we say are first-order desires are often second-order ones, especially when it comes to things we think would be good for us. This has been a constant source of frustration in leading book clubs in the past. A lot more people say they are interested in reading books than actually read them. Being part of a book club requires foresight, and what potential members often indicate is a first-order desire ("I want to be in a book club!") is actually a second-order one ("I want to want to be in a book club, because I know it's good for me to read more books; but I don't really want it more than I want _____").

Another useful tool of thought I gained in college from my friend Dave, who helped me administer a campus book club. When we would work to recruit, it was usually an exercise in futility, and the result was a good cop/bad cop situation. I'd handle the pleasant invitation, and when (inevitably) excuses were given why the person couldn't join, bad cop stepped in. Here's how a conversation would go:

eBooks and Book Clubs

This past Friday my book club met to discuss Frankenstein. I thought this meeting was a prime opportunity to test out my Nook in a book club setting, especially since Abby and I normally share a copy at our meetings, and I tend to be a book hog (and have so many pages flagged that it can be disorienting for someone who doesn't understand the system).

All I can say is that, while readers are trying to create a book club atmosphere through online sharing and conversations, they fail for me in an actual book club setting.