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Posts Tagged ‘book club’

Beau and Arrow – The Year of Living Biblically

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Last Wednesday I participated in a book club on AJ Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it, as it had me laughing out loud periodically. Jacobs is an experimental journalist who writes for Esquire, and in this book he goes on a year-long journey attempting to follow the Bible as literally as possible. Through his hilarious adventures, he learns about fundamentalism (both Jewish and Christian), his own religious heritage, and his spiritual life. Also, he dresses up in all white, grows a full beard, blows the shofar on street corners at the first day of every month and throws pebbles at adulterers. Entertainment!
Like all book clubs, tangents are always the most exciting part, because tangents form an opportunity for discussion beyond the scope of the novel, and into the participants’ basic  intellectual yearning to discuss personal opinions and issues. You have just gotten a small insight into my senior thesis, of which a substantial rough draft is due tomorrow morning. Thanks for letting me practice. Yes I do want to cry now.
Back to our tangents, they were really  great, and what was supposed to be an hour-long book club, became a too-good-to-stop, 3 hour book club. As a group of modern Orthodox Jews, we discussed the ritual life inherent in being an observant Jew, and what it all might amount to. We also tapped into spirituality, cherry-picking religion, oh, and our basic ideas about what type of life we think people should lead and why. Sound heavy? It is!
One important reason why I mention all this is because AJ Jacobs admits to constantly Googling himself and references thereof, and I think it would be pretty damn cool if he saw this post. It would most definitely rank high on my “famous connections” list. So AJ if you’re listening in, hi, I think you’re funny (very).
Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing! In an attempt to come as close as possible to having a slave, Jacobs picks up a non-paying intern who does all his dirty work for free. Turns out, since the book’s publication, that very intern wrote a book of his own (about Jerry Falwell), and it actually did pretty well. An intern turned famous? Clap clap clap.

Rachel Lily

Beau and Arrow – Labyrinths

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

I go to a lot of book clubs because my thesis is on my book clubs so yes, you will be hearing a lot about them. I went to another one on Monday night, my “shoeless” book club (because shoes are not allowed). An eclectic bunch in socks and slippers, roaming around a gorgeous downtown apartment talking about the selected literature of the month. This time, the topic was Borges, a true giant in the literary world, a visionary thinker, and one of the smartest guys who ever lived. He’s basically a walking encyclopedia, and his works are dense and complicated, and make you do what all great literature should make you do – THINK. But more importantly, and we discussed this in our book club, Borges seems to really make you want to write. So my tip of the week: if you’re having writer’s block, pick up Library of Babel and in the words of The Matrix (whose themes are interspersed throughout Borges’ works and which just so happens to be my favorite movie) “Free your mind.”

My fiasco of the week occured just prior to the Shoeless Book Club. After picking up 12 copies of the next meeting’s book (Shakespeare’s The Tempest! Now featured in BAM), I got on the Q train and took it one stop over to Canal Street. Over the past few months I have used the train probably more times than my whole life combined, all thanks to HopStop.com. The problem is, in this case, HopStop wanted me to make a left on said “unnamed road.” I walked on, with my 20 lbs of books in on hand, pocketbook in the other, looking for a dark alley? A random cross street? Possibly a direction-giving angel?

I sought out the angels on every corner. I gave my look of desperation to many strangers on the street, hands turned over in confusion, and pleaded with them –  “Hudson Streeet?!” Two women on separate occasions attempted to show me where we were on their cell phone GPS, possibly more concerned with showing off that they actually had this technology and not that the map was reading off to me like an obscure dialect of Swahili. Admittedly, directions are my biggest weakness. The one thing I can rely on is that my instincts are almost always dead wrong. Oftentimes, if my insides say “Go right!”, I will make the L shape with my left hand and go left. Other strangers were equally unhelpful, pointing in directions where the road was ending, and/or not knowing we were in Manhattan. Two old ladies in matching puffy jackets who didn’t speak English to save their lives, tried to reason with me. “Hud-son Street,” I mouthed slowly. “Ah, Hudon swaygegda,” one said while making a vertical sweeping motion with her hand. I am pretty sure they were sending me to the Hudson River. And one guy was equally flustered, “I dunno maybe SOHO?!” His attitude and accent sounded strangely familiar, and upon his asking if I was from the Jewish Syrian community, I confirmed this recognition. It’s a small world after all?

I called my sister half in sobs, “I’m lostttt!”
“Where are you?” she asked. “Where am I?!” I shouted to the nearest New York stranger. Luckily, I was a block away from my destination, and my disaster was finally at a close. 40 minutes of agony later I was at the Shoeless Book Club ready to discuss Borges’ Labyrinths. Labyrinths. Haha very funny (=sarcasm).

Adios!

Rachel Lily