Blog written by Nimesh Ved (Book Club participant)
Thursday evenings, 7.00 pm to 8.30 pm, some of us meet online to discuss the book we have read during the week gone by. Each of us have, of course, read the same chapter(s) from the same book. We are a part of Bookworm’s ‘Non Fiction Reading Circle’. The Bookworm team ensures timely communication (book details, links and reminders for the meetings and such) and also sends the books by Speed Post to those of us who do not have a copy and want to borrow one; we return the book once the sessions are over.
We read the books individually, it is the discussions that follow that are a group activity. The group is small, 15 to 20 people, and smaller if the book is dense; a few of us may also drop-off as the chapters progress. The scale enables the Reading Circle to be close-knitted and informal. The group that continues, that is regular, usually comes prepared – having read the book in time, participates in conversations – listens to others and on occasions also agrees to disagree, and ensures continuity – a book takes around 4 weeks.
Once we closed early as there was little further to discuss in the chapter, while on another occasion – mid-way through one book we realized we will need more time so we continued the book for 2 additional weeks. Some evenings one of us may suffer from a bad connection and or may not have been able to read the chapter or raise a point already discussed during the previous week, while on others a couple of us may share papers and articles over email to add to the discussions. This flexibility ensures that the Reading Circle remains humane.
Listening to group members has been an eye-opening experience for me; to observe how differently each of us can look at the same text. One of us could be more concerned about the woods, the other about the trees. A particular line or a word would have made an impact on one while the tone may have touched the other. For one of us the chapter may have helped arrive at an understanding while for the other it could only have given rise to questions. One would have agreed with the text while the other was left wondering what the author was thinking (or not thinking) while writing the chapter. A particularly dense chapter had left me blank while I noticed that a few others were not only able to delve deeper and discuss select sentences, they had marked in advance, but also read between the lines as well. It helps that the co-readers are more serious readers than I.
The conversations we have as a group have many times made me pause and think. When one of us said “reading has become aspirational today” it brought out the unfortunate reality of the day or when we discussed the term “vulgar” and I had no idea that it originally stood for “common people”. On one Thursday I found the conversations far more interesting than the text itself, while on another Thursday a few of us, not agreeing with the book, dissected it to such an extent that I was left wondering whether even the author and the editor had thought as much!
Books that I have been a part of have focused on Caste and Education. When I read and then listened to others in the group share their views I was often reminded of books on the topic that I had read including Serious Men and Ravan & Eddie. Also of stark comments by friends; “It is those who are at the top who bend the most, this is how they continue to remain at the top” – a friend, a brahman in Banaras, had said of brahmans. The Reading Circle has encouraged me to read more, and somehow this feels nice.
Being a part of the Reading Circle has enabled me to read books I was neither aware of nor perhaps I would have picked up on my own. Not only have I chipped away some of my ignorance on Caste and Education but the sessions have also made me look at reading, and people, in a fresh light. Reading, for me, now is also a communal activity and the Reading Circle is a new community I am now a part of. A community around books that has brought hope during times when books are vanishing from our lives. I look forward to Thursdays like a sangeet rasik looks forward to sangeet baithaks.
Bio: Nimesh enjoys reading and discussing books; he blogs at https://nimesh-ved.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at nimesh.explore@gmail.com.