Graffiti Book Club

*photo credit: i.pinimg.com

So a few of my girlfriends and I got together for our first meeting of Graffiti Book Club last weekend. The idea sprang at a pool party a few weeks prior. We were all leisurely floating around when someone in the group starting talking about a book they were currently reading. All of us who were in that conversation are educators, and most of us avid readers. We decided we wanted to get together to actually talk about books (as opposed to just drink and gossip - we've all been in those book clubs too, right?!), but not necessarily the same one. So the idea we came up with was this - pick any book you want to read. In the front cover, write your name, the year, and Graffiti Book Club, and then as you read annotate the text. Connections you made. Reflections. Questions. Doodles. Whatever. We encouraged each other to come prepared with a brief synopsis of the book and/or a dish to share related to the content.

When we reconvened we would each pick a new book to go home with, pick a new color ink, fill in our name under the original owner's, and fill it with our thoughts. The idea being that as the book makes its way around the circle you get a view into what others were thinking as they read it. A diary of sorts- intermixing with the content within the pages. It could feel vulnerable to do that. Scary - even. But it also gives you more story. And I LOVE story!

Every time I find myself writing erratically in the margins of a text, I think of American writer and literary critic Anatole Broyard's piece in the New York Times dated 1988 titled "About Books; The Price of Reading is Eternal Vigilance." It reads, "As soon as I open it, I occupy the book, I stomp around in it. I underline passages, scribble in the margins, leave my mark - in effect I write my own book, a counterversion. I've come to understand that there are two dramas in reading: the drama of the books' internal relations and the drama of its relation to me. Sometimes, by default, the second is the better one."

"I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love."

~ Mortimer Adler

Because it was the first time we were meeting and because not all of us had the chance to finish reading the books we had chosen to graffiti some of us went the "blind date with a book" route and wrapped a book in paper with a one sentence clue about its content.

I read the book I chose in 72 hrs. (I am a slow slow reader so this is quite a feat!!) It was amazeballs! The Light We Lost tells the story of great loves and losses and the competition that ensues between them.

One of my favorite parts of the novel reads: "...she thinks of every romance she's in as if it's a type of fire. That some relationships feel like a wildfire - they're powerful and compelling and majestic and dangerous and have the capability to burn you before you even realize you've been consumed. And that some relationships feel like a hearth fire - they're solid and stable and cozy and nourishing. She had other examples - a bonfire relationship, a sparkler - that one was for a one-night stand, I think - but the wildfire and the hearth fire are the two that I remember most" (p. 138).

I mean, honestly, how perfect is that analogy.

After we all chose our books we spent 10 minutes to spread out and read them, and then we came back together to dish about what we thought so far.