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Rumpus Book ClubAbout The Women – The Rumpus Book Club
Time is quickly running out to join The Rumpus Book Club in time to receive Rumpus Women, Volume I. It’s the first book published by The Rumpus Paper Internets imprint and it’s full of never-before-published personal essays by some of our favorite Rumpus writers.
It’s fun when you read the book with the book club. There’s an email discussion group that is extremely active and talks about the book all month. Not everyone wants to be part of the email discussion, which everybody can post to. Some receive it as a digest once a day and others don’t subscribe to the group. But the people in the email discussion group enjoy it a lot.
Members often write reviews, or think pieces, about the book which we run on The Rumpus. One member has been reviewing the books in a cartoon.
At the end of the month there’s a hosted online discussion between the book club and the author. This month will feature the editors of the collection, Julie Greicius and Elissa Bassist, and some of the contributors, including Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Padma Viswanathan, and Sugar, just to name a few.
Book club members receive the books a month in advance of publication (roughly). So we’re discussing the book all month prior to reviews being released, and chatting with the author right around the publication date. We then edit the discussion and run it on the site as an interview with the author conducted by the book club.
We choose books that are either highly recommended by someone we trust, something we think our book club members would be particularly interested in, or just a fantastic book that people would be unlikely to find out about on their own. Many of the books we choose are from smaller presses (though we’ve also done books from Little Brown and Norton). We look for gems. The book club is a place for literary people. There are no books written by platform authors, celebrity memoirs, or supermarket best-sellers. We’re not worried if the author didn’t receive a large advance and isn’t being heavily promoted by deep pockets. In fact, that’s the point. Because for the most part the best books aren’t being heavily promoted, are not big money makers. In fact, much of the best, most daring fiction is coming from small presses (though much is being published by large presses, buried at the bottom of their list). These books require thought, and time to read.
And they’re more fun to read as a group.
But even if you don’t want to participate in any of the book club group activities it’s still fun to get a cool new book in the mail every month, usually hardcover.
We’re pleased to announce Pacazo by Roy Kesey as our January book club selection. A beautiful, almost surreal novel set in South America, released mid-February in hardcover from Dzanc Books. In February we’ll feature The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, our first memoir selection, from Hawthorne House.
Sign up for The Rumpus Book Club here. International subscribers here. More information.
November 6th, 2010 at 10:39 am
I joined the book club just in time to get my copy of the ‘Rumpus Women’. I have to say, this book is a great advert for the book club.
I am only half way through the book and I have not yet come across a poor story. Not one story has failed to touch me or move in some powerful way.
The fact that they are not perfect women but real women really comes across and their stories are so inspiring. You cannot fail to be touched. The writing is so beautiful too. The talent of the writers is exceptional and some of the prose is almost poetic and so visual.
A great collection and the thing that thrills me the most, is the title where I read, ‘Vol 1′.
I will be purchasing a second copy, with the intention of handing it out to a good friend. This book is an excellent advert for the Rumpus site and the book club.