(sheepishly) "I, um. . .didn't finish the book."
A solution for the thorniest problem faced by book clubs.
I was a proud founding member, for several years, of “The Blade’s Book Club,” a book club composed of a handful of employees of Toledo, Ohio’s daily newspaper, The Blade. As far as I can recall we didn’t refer to ourselves as the “BBC,” but that would have been cool, right?
As with most book clubs, our members took on the task of reading one book each month (I struggled with how best to phrase this task - if I had said, “. . .reading the same book each month,” that might have implied that we all read the same book over and over, every month, which is just plain silly, but, as it stands, you might get the impression that each of us read a different book, which kinda’ defeats the purpose of a book club, so, I throw up my hands in defeat, and hope that you understand our reading mission - perhaps, for context, you have a passing familiarity with how book clubs work, and that will help you intuit my meaning here), and then gathered for lunch to discuss the book.
Governance of this book club was quite democratic, and responsibility for choosing that month’s selection rotated throughout the group. The makeup of the club was overwhelmingly female - I might have been the only male member, although I believe my colleague, whom I will call George (because that’s his name), drifted in and out of the group at times. Pro tip: Book clubs, which generally feature a high concentration of women, can be a great place to meet women.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that my first two book choices for this club were true “clinkers;” it took until my third attempt to finally land on a book which was greeted with positive acclaim. The irony is that I didn’t write these books, but, in choosing them for the club to read, I was, effectively, endorsing them. So, my advice to you is to be mindful of the company you keep, even if it’s just a book.
Due to my membership in this group, I was introduced to a good many books I would not have been likely to pick up, because they didn’t fit neatly in my preferred Dan Brown/John Grisham/Stephen King/Michael Chrichton/John Irving/John Updike reading list tent. But, I enjoyed most of these book club books, which I won’t bother to detail here, because they’re just as likely to be found by Googling “Most popular book club selections.” And, I think my fellow-members were able to surface “winners” on their very first attempts, rather than sweating it out until the third try.
You won't have to wait until your third try to get it right - you can make the right choice the first time - simply click the button here to subscribe now to Rule of Three - it's free! We even encountered a few young-adult (“YA”) novels. I wouldn’t recommend them as a steady diet, but, indicating that I enjoyed reading them is not necessarily a sign of weakness; also, perhaps I gathered some intelligence which helped me to better understand my children - just kidding, the only way I could learn something to help me to better understand my children would be to watch The Brady Bunch reruns - just kidding, when my mother would wonder aloud why “we kids” couldn’t act more like the Brady kids, whom we spent time watching on TV, we would respond that we were not absorbing life-lessons from them, we were simply laughing at how dorky those kids were.
One of the issues faced by book clubs is ensuring ready availability of the current month’s book selection. Those who frequent public libraries might encounter “out-of-stock” conditions when seeking a book, particularly if the book in question is a popular read, or is included on the lists of “Most popular book club selections.” An easy solution, of course, is to turn to Amazon, which can typically land the requested book on your front porch within twenty-four hours. As an added bonus, you can have overnighted to you an oversize package of toilet paper, a chainsaw, and several pairs of Crocs.
A more difficult problem to be solved, however, is that everyone has a busy life, which sometimes interferes with the ability to power through a book within the monthly cycle demanded by book clubs.
Rule of Three to the rescue!
By dialing the target-age segment of books to be read by the book club from “YA” novels further down to children’s books, accomplishing the task of reading that month’s book selection would be much simpler, inasmuch as children’s books are generally quicker reads, containing less text, and more pictures. Problem solved!
We here at Rule of Three have our own favorites, when it comes to children’s books, and the remaining real estate of this column will be devoted to those favorites. But, our crack research team did provide us with some intelligence, which might provide context for our favorites, in the form of “Time Magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time”.
The league leader is Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans - it’s tough to argue with that choice, a classic, featuring a playful young girl at a Catholic boarding school in Paris. The good doctor, Dr. Seuss, is heavily represented on the list, including his The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, Yertle the Turtle, and Oh the Places You’ll Go! As you might expect, many of these books feature animals, such as bunnies, ducklings, dogs, cats, caterpillars! pigeons, frogs, mice, elephants (Babar!), penguins, owls, lions, wombats? pigs, alligators, geese, and bears. While we’re on the subject of bears, I take exception to A Bear Called Paddington (No. 15) outpacing Winnie the Pooh (No. 41) - who allowed the Brits to stuff the ballot box and deliver this miscarriage of justice? More esoteric offerings provided by Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak are also included on the list.
I’d like to share with you, oh I don’t know, maybe Three of my favorite children’s books, and also provide you with a glimpse of a potential book club discussion surrounding each of them, in order to prepare you for what may come your way, should your book club adopt Rule of Three’s innovative book selection solution.
As I alluded to just above, I am a fan of that silly old bear, Winnie the Pooh, the quintessential children’s literature bear. The book club discussion might unfold as follows:
Book Club Member #1: “Alright, everybody, what did we think of Winnie the Pooh?”
Book Club Member #2: “Well, I enjoyed it immensely - the body positivity message was awesome - I like that the main character seems unfazed by his rotundity.”
Book Club Member #3: “Yeah, getting himself stuck in Rabbit’s entranceway was a brilliant piece of storytelling.”
Book Club Member #3: “My favorite part of that was Gopher, with his plan to deploy dynamite to extract him - he’s ‘not in the book, you know!’”
Book Club Member #4: “I don’t know, Eeyore was kind of a downer - you’d think his pals in Hundred Acre Wood might have helped him access quality mental health care.”
Book Club Member #5: “I liked Pooh’s plan to disguise himself as a raincloud to fool the bees, and get to their honey - ‘You never can tell with bees.’ Priceless.”
Book Club Member #6: “I don’t know - a raincloud? That seemed a bit implausible to me.”
Book Club Member #7: “Right. That’s why the bees saw through the plan. That was the point.”
Book Club Member #1: “So, it sounds as if the consensus on Winnie the Pooh is positive, right?”
Book Club Members (in unison): “Yeah!”
Another of my favorites, which was in heavy rotation with my kids at bedtime: Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle. The book club might review that book in this way:
Book Club Member #1: “So, Yertle the Turtle - what do you think?”
Book Club Member #2: “Well, I don’t know - Yertle seemed like kind of a douchebag.”
Book Club Member #3: “Yeah, he wasn’t meant to be a sympathetic character. And, he got his in the end.”
Book Club Member #4: “Wait, what? Yertle the Turtle? I thought we were gonna’ discuss Hop on Pop.”
Book Club Member #4: “I think in the sequel Yertle would be deposed as king, and Mack would be recruited to take his place.”
Book Club Member #5: “That’s ridiculous. I mean, yeah, Mack was the one who caused the tower of turtles to topple over, but he did it in kind of a passive-aggressive way, with a burp. Any group of voters is not going to fall for that crap.”
Book Club Member #6: “Voters? What the hell are you talking about?”
Book Club Member #7: “Yeah, this story is about turtles, for Chrissake, not elections.”
Book Club Member #4: “Yes, but it’s also an allegorical tale about the price of greed.”
Book Club Member #8: “I don’t know - I read it as a kind of real estate play - you know, ‘I’m the ruler. . .of all that I see’ - it sounds as if he aspires to be a real estate tycoon.”
Book Club Member #9: “And, what kind of name is Yertle, anyway?”
Finally, another classic children’s book, which was curiously left off Time Magazine’s list, even though the main character is an animal - perhaps the only animal missing from the list: a monkey. That’s right: Curious George. A reading of Curious George might inspire this type of discussion in a book club meeting:
Book Club Member #1: “I’m curious as to what everybody thinks about this month’s book: Curious George.”
Book Club Member #2: “I read it as a cautionary tale about ‘the man trying to keep us down’ - specifically, the ‘Man in the Yellow Hat’ trying to keep this poor monkey down.”
Book Club Member #3: “Monkeys are so cute.”
Book Club Member #4: “Monkeys throw their feces.”
Book Club Member #5: “Isn’t there usually wine at these things?”
Book Club Member #2: “Hey! Did you guys hear me? Is this thing on? I said I thought Curious George is about this innocent monkey being tricked into being captured - remember the yellow hat ruse? and forcibly removed from his homeland, traveling across rough seas to an unfamiliar land, where he is to be caged for the rest of his life.”
Book Club Member #6: “Oh, come off it - the “Man in the Yellow Hat” brings him into his home, feeds him a nice meal, allows him to smoke his pipe, and tucks him in bed.”
Book Club Member #7: “Yeah, and then he causes problems by calling the fire department, and later ends up in the zoo. Curious monkeys are nothing but trouble.”
Book Club Member #1: “Wow! you guys sure detected a lot of subtext there. I simply read a heartwarming story about a monkey.”
So, those are my favorites. What are yours? And, is your book club wine-focused, or lunch-based?
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I loved all those books!
….. a heartwarming story about a monkey. …… with a closing line like this a monkey column must be forthcoming.