Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
What joins us together into fair-minded, fertile groups? What would democracy look like, if we ever got it right? What is true love even about?
There are kossacks I’ve never met, never even seen their picture, whom I love. How can that be? Surely love needs intimate soil to grow in. Doesn’t love grow out of spending days together, hugging and laughing, cooking dinner and cleaning up, walking the dog hand in hand, spotting a hummingbird in the same instant?
Yet somehow, magically, mere words on a page or screen can be enough soil for love to grow from. Here in our comments we share thoughts and feelings, cherish the sympathies we discover, and respect the differences. Or we pie-fight. But sometimes we get past that, and become close friends. We grow into caring for comments and recs, when the other person, as far as we can see, is just a made-up name on our screen. Not me, I truly am Brecht — though my father did borrow my name from the German playwright.
Writing is a marvelous membrane, so nimble and fluid that it can at times express vast and sweeping ideas, at other times capture tiny and precise details. These words have no sound nor face to Brechtify them, with my three-dimensional humanity and personality — yet they still sound like me, they carry my voice. It’s surprising how much of my essence can infuse this scribbling.
Writing is so rich with meaning that we can love a writer merely from reading their pages, even if they’ve never read one word of ours. I love Charles Dickens and Ursula LeGuin, because I have traveled so widely in their books that I feel I know them, and admire them, and love. After all the worlds and characters they’ve shown me, the thoughts and feelings they’ve shared, I trust their decency and sensitivity, their curiosity and wit. Their humanity resonates with mine, and enlarges it. When they lead me into dark and troubled waters, I hold their hand and follow, unafraid. Is that not love?
So writing, when done well, becomes a bridge between all of us, a place where groups can meet. On Daily Kos, we progressives come together to moan and laugh and organize. In Readers & Book Lovers, we leave a lot of political bickering and spin cycle outside, and talk instead about the books we love, or not, and why. And of many other things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—Of cabbages—and kings—And why the sea is boiling hot—And whether pigs have wings.
Books, and other art, work as soul-medicines, mind-stretchers, a place to reflect on our own humanity, and other humanities that look less like us. I asked up top: What is true love even about? Books consider that old chestnut from every conceivable angle, portraying loves that bloom into joy and deep loyalty, and other loves that fail and fall apart.
Love between two people is hard. It takes work, sacrifice, a whole lot of compromise. We each need to become our whole self, and also make room for a whole self that is not us, that feels and wants different things. Love requires a lot of balancing and course correction, a lot of trial and error.
Groups are like that, but with many more moving bodies. Literally, if you’re polyamorous. Democracy in practice is a pain in the ass. There’s no pleasing everyone, and you can wear yourself out even trying. In my freshman year (awhile ago), I became head of my dorm’s social committee, responsible for organizing, throwing, and cleaning up after our parties. Big parties. I soon found that, for every student who would lend a hand to make it all happen, there were ten who would thoughtfully explain to me just how I could have done a better job. But I had to listen to each, because one of them might be right. That constant work, listening, and forbearance, is the pulse of democracy.
What I most admire about cfk is the fourteen years of work she has put into growing democracy right here in Bookflurries, at the heart of R&BLers, in the deep end of Daily Kos. She always listens to everyone, she wants to know what you are reading, and she extends herself to wrap her arms around the concerns and interests of every one of her guests. A magnificent hostess, and the very spirit of democracy.
I am loathe to relinquish our spirit of communion here. We have many fine diary series at R&BLers, but this has long been the friendliest, attracting the broadest company. So I have a radical proposal, which I will expound on at greater length next Wednesday. In brief, I’d like us to try a group-based Bookchat, where we (almost) all pitch in to write diaries. R&BLers has 274 members. I plan to kosmail each of our members (well, not those who have left DKos), inviting you all to contribute to our cooperative salon. If I can get a fifth of R&BLers to agree, that will add up to more than a year of Wednesdays. There are so many R&BLers who I know, from your comments, have splendid book diaries in you, just waiting to be shaped and shared. This expansive teamwork will get us all better acquainted, and allow every individual to add to R&BLers just what they think it could use a little more of. Still, we must cultivate our garden — and it will be a more joyful adventure if we all do it together.
Readers & Book Lovers is an odd-shaped thing these days. We are mostly healthy: much liked, the most followed DKos group, with several fine and diverse weekly series. I admire and appreciate all our editors and writers, and their good work. We clearly provide many qualities that kossacks are thirsty for.
On the other hand, we are pretty shambolic. Limelite founded Readers & Book Lovers, and she was the wisest and gentlest dictator you could wish for. She grew R&BLers, but has mostly retreated from our field, moving on to other projects, and enjoying time with her family in Georgia. When an R&BLer asks to set up a new series, we Admins encourage and advise them. Somehow, with a few dozen talented and dedicated diarists, this semi-anarchy works.
Yet we have so many other talented writers in our ranks, and there are so many more bookish and adjacent matters we could be writing and talking about. I believe Bookchat 2021 is just the greenhouse where we can plant a few dozen new kinds of flower, to see which take root and want to spread further, into a second diary or possibly a new series.
Bookchat can have many other purposes, first among them the sheer joy of writing and sharing your reflections. If there is something you love in books, that you have never seen discussed in an R&BLers diary, then your mission is to write that very diary and show us. A reasonable mission, easy to achieve.
As we gather several dozen R&BLers, and as each Bookchat diarist brings their individual enthusiasms to the table, we can develop a gradually expanding conversation about what R&BLers is, and what we’d like it to become. We can both play with our chemistry, our imaginations, and also do the work to examine and strengthen our democracy. Teamwork and play. Some Bookchatters will just want to write one diary, then let it go; others will be drawn into the ongoing conversation, will keep coming back weekly, and then get more involved in Readers & Book Lovers.
Anyone who wants to write a Bookchat diary in 2021, please say so in a comment below, or send me a kosmail. Several said so last week, and I will follow up with each of you. If you’re already a member of R&BLers, I will kosmail you, asking you to contribute a Bookchat diary, eventually.
If you are not yet a member of Readers & Book Lovers, please ask us (or me) to send you an invite to join this group. We will require a promise that you will write a Bookchat diary in 2021: basically, a diary about a book you like or find interesting, or about some aspect or genre of books that you’d like to explore.
Youffraita is working on a letter for cfk, so if you have a message for cfk, please write it in your comment below. A short message is absolutely fine.
Finally, in the spirit of democracy and brainstorming, what else do you think we could or should do with our Bookchat diaries next year?