#Microblog Monday 275: Random Reading
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So a fun thought from Diary of a Bookseller. The bookseller has something he calls the Random Book Club. Every month, he packages up a random book and mails it to the subscriber. So it’s like Stitchfix, only books, and it doesn’t sound like you get any say in the book you receive. And there’s no exchanging it for another book. So totally not my thing, BUT this idea later in the book is my thing.
On page 70, he writes, “I am considering organising a Random Book Club event in London – probably a talk by an author, but the audience won’t know who the author will be until the talk starts.” So you’d show up for an author talk, not knowing the person who is speaking until you’re already seated.
It appeals because it’s a fun surprise without the big time commitment. I would never want to lock up hours on a book that I had no interest reading, but I’d be totally down for listening to a random author I may not know for an hour. Or maybe I need a Random Short Story Club…
Would you go to an event like this?
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10 comments
Sounds like fun and I would go. It would be interesting to see who shows up and whether I might like their book! It’s a little like an executive forum I go to every now and then. While we get a blurb on the topic and the person speaking, I don’t research them beforehand. Instead, I show up and it’s generally a surprise whether I resonate with the person or not.
No, I don’t think so. I have an attention span of a 4 year old at “talks” or lectures (add docent-led tours to the list) unless I’m extremely interested in the person or subject. I’d be more likely to give a new genre a try at my leisure than to be confined to an hour or more of someone talking about one I don’t know much about.
No. My time is too valuable to me to spend an hour of it listening to someone who might be of zero interest to me.
I’d go! It’s how I found out about and read Hitler’s Last Courier by Armin Lehmann (Oh, he died in 2008. ;( ). It was a very interesting talk, I learned a lot and it has never left my mind. I’m so glad my brother asked me to go (I had flown into town literally the night before.)
I have a friend that goes to author talks many times a month (perks of living in a big, accessable city) and I’ve always been a bit envious.
I’d go. I’d also consider being involved in a Random Book Club. The thing I loved about my old bookclub was being exposed to books I’d never have picked up otherwise. And some of them turned out to be my favourite books ever.
That sounds like fun! It would also probably make me read books I never thought I would read, just because I resonated with the author.
That might be fun. 🙂
I would be game for going to the talk, for the same reason — low time commitment, and it would probably expose me to someone new and interesting. But I can’t get behind the random book club mailing thing. I order a fair number of books from a company called Bas Bleu, and they do blind sets of “Mysteries” or “Nonfiction” or “Book of the Month” and they are like grab bags, but it causes me anxiety to think of a bunch of books coming that I might a) hate or b) already have or c) like some but hate others and feel like I wasted a bit of my book budget. I am a wet blanket though because I generally hate surprises, that whole needing to control things, so maybe it would be a fun and low-risk way to challenge that and live dangerously. This book is really giving you a LOT of food for thought!
It’s an interesting idea and when I was younger with more time it would have appealed to me but not any more. My local cinema as a sneak preview on but you don’t know what the movie will be in advance. I have been tempted in the past to attend but then I don’t like the idea of being stuck having to watch something I don’t like if I got unlucky.
It takes a LOT for me to commit to going out. So I don’t think I would find this get-up-and-out-worthy.