The idea of a Progressive Book Club to help connect progressive authors with progressive audiences has been in the works for some time, and it's very exciting to see it coming to fruition this week.
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Progressive Book Club
16 Jun 2008 12:55 am
Comments (13)
How do you join this book club?
This sounds like the most horrid idea since the Inqusition. A quasi-literary salon inhabited by do-gooder liberal/progressives and their precious books. The Waffen SS held more adventure and promise.
I never would have thought a book club would warrant comparisons to Nazis and the Spanish Inquisition. Give Trevor a guest-hosting gig on the O'Reilly Factor!
Uh, JoshA, referencing the SS, the Inquisition... It's called *hyperbole. Often a nice appendage to having a literary imagination. And, whilst spending time with O'Reilly and his loofah would be arguably worse than an Inquisitorial auto-de-fe - it wouldn't be a stretch to say that after the initial thrill - joining a lib/progressive book club might induce nausea and, yes, even tedium. Not, that it wouldn't bring you elation, but, there it is...
hyperbole...appendage...whilst...auto-de-fe, tedium...elation
Such erudition! Such lexicographical virtuosity! Verily, the verbal gods sing of thee, if such gods survive in our fallen world of simple words! In the presence of such enlightened commentary, chastened by such rhetorical gifts, who would dare deny your sophisticated critique of such a horror as the book club above described?
Oh, eb. I'll bet you say that to all the girls.
btw, any relation to the *Eb from "Green Acres". Now, there was a prairie Nabokov!
It's probably worth mentioning in a historical perspective the role of the UK's Left Book Club, which introduced a lot of people to the book-form writing of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, and others. It had its own spotted history -- following the popular front line on Stalin until 1939 -- but it was as significant as a book club could likely be on British leftist and socialist thought. Labour leader, municipal reformer, close partner to Winston Churchill, and then Prime Minister Clement Atlee was published too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Book_Club
I hope the Progressive Book Club features self published authors with Lulu.com and other self publishers.
Most book publishers are branches of big media. As such, any brook published - no matter how "progressive" its content - is nevertheless part of the current media oligopoly.
In contrast, any self published book, even if about - say - thumbtacks, is nevertheless a progressive effort to push back against that oligopoly.
So any progressive book club should - all other factors being equal - favor self published books.
When I am elected President, I will be forming a Book Club of Democracies.
I'm with Trevor. The more liberals and conservatives segregate themselves from each other, the worse off we become. Besides, the liberal echo chamber is as boring as the conservative one.
You guys are commenting on a liberal blog about the dangers of the echo chamber? Hilarious.
Signed up this morning. Nixonland, HITS and Omnivore's dilemna on their way to me shortly. Three Cups of Tea next on the list. Personally I like the convenience and this was just the thing to get me off my duff and reading.
+1 (assuming the order processing goes smoothly. I'm sure I'll be back to complain if it doesn't.)
So, seeing as they only give 4% of royalties to the authors (esp. on the $1 specials), would you be discouraged if people purchased HITS there?
Comments closed June 30, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Uh-oh, Matt, has the book club included you on their list...
Posted by Swan | June 16, 2008 1:26 AM