An Artist's Representation of a "Book Club."
This is a SECRET SOCIETY
Good evening, whenever you are. It’s me again: John Hodgman.
So I finished reading MIDDLEMARCH. I started it at the beginning of this year because our daughter was writing about it for college, and K had read it years before.
They both loved it. I felt a desire to honor their work, and I also wanted some spinach to eat to balance out the junk food of reddit I was gobbling up each night at 3AM. But it turned out, MIDDLEMARCH the most delicious, funny, insightful spinach there is.
My experience reading it was bookended by two serendipities of the kind we talk about here in SECRET sometimes: the false magic of coincidence that you find just by looking for it, but feels magical still.
The first is that, thanks to a SECRET SOCIETY member, I learned that my old friend Chris Frizzelle was just beginning a zoom book club on the subject of, of course, MIDDLEMARCH. I had only missed a maybe one or two meetings.
So I joined it, and I have talked about it but will say it again: IT WAS GREAT AND YOU SHOULD FOLLOW HIM.
Chris was the editor of The Stranger in Seattle for many years, and he is a great writer and teacher and book club leader. He does other things that I talk to him about in the conversation below, which is in the public area because I want you all to know him.
I would not have likely finished MIDDLEMARCH without all my book club friends on Saturdays. And week by week our meetings paced things out such that I arrived at the second serendipity: Our daughter finished writing about MIDDLEMARCH. And then she finished college. And then two days later, having driven her home in sad and happy silence, I finished MIDDLEMARCH.
The last few chapters really speed by. I read two of the final four in a coffee shop, with JULIET STEVENSON reading to me in my ear. Then I listened to her finish the book as I walked around Prospect Park.
The last sentence came as I reached the Citibike station near the farmer’s market. I won’t spoil it for you (though I think Chris and I do in our conversation; still you should watch it). Suffice to say I got stopped in tracks.
I stood there, probably for a full minute. MIDDLEMARCH is a big book. Other big things had happened. I tried to process all these conclusions that had arrived at the same time, but I couldn’t. So I bought strawberries and mustard greens instead. That was all I could do.
Later, we ate them. That was as good an ending as we got.
Anyway, this past Saturday was my first without MIDDLEMARCH book club, so on Friday I got greedy and made Chris Frizzelle talk to me about it and other things, just because I missed him.
And here it is…
Here is that link again for CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE and all his wordy enterprises.
As you can tell, I shamelessly love reading aloud, and as I hinted to Chris, I was thinking it would be fun to read WUTHERING HEIGHTS to you.
Then I remembered that MICHAEL IAN BLACK already did this! And it was great and you should listen to him do it HERE. It’s funny how constantly I am stealing.
But I will still read WUTHERING HEIGHTS personally. (I won’t make Chris do it).
And up the stairs in the SECRET ROOM I am leaving something else for you. Maybe the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but I had fun, so I do not apologize.
