Image of "Mister Pip" bookcover
In English common law, if there are two people present it constitutes a “gathering” and if there are three, it is recognized as a “riot.”
That said, I would have to concede that the book club I belong to is now evolving from a “gathering” to a “riot.”
It is however, not quite what most people would categorize as a book club for several reasons, but notably because we appear to have absolutely no rules. The membership of this club is also loosely defined, and really it all started with my mother’s visit and a particular occasion when I happened to have two copies of the same magazine available. Sitting at the table and reading the same edition of a magazine over coffee, we would periodically look up and say, “Oh Look! Go to page such and such..” and we would both turn to the same page, review the article, exchange opinions and generate our ideas about the various unconnected projects that we each had. This was the precursor to our book club; a “gathering” for the purposes of reading, if you will.
The book club started later. It started with books that one of us had read. We did a sort of airmail exchange, posting the book that we had each selected independently; on finishing it we slipped it into an envelope and with a simple message on a card sent it off across the pond. It diminished the miles of the Atlantic ocean. And so I sent, “Out Stealing Horses,” and in the return package I received a copy of “The Tenderness of Wolves.”
The confusion started when I started ordering books, as gifts from Amazon to be delivered directly to my mother. These were books that appealed to me, though they were also selected on the basis that I too would like to read them. Because they were gifts, my mother did not return these books, or at least that was the reason I thought that she did not return them. It made sense after all. Why would you send someone a present only to expect them to return it! In turned out in fact that my mother thought I had chosen them because they were books I had already read!
If two people represent a gathering and three a riot, then we were very soon into having a riot with our book club: The introduction of the “new” gift books meant that there was something of a backlog to my mother’s reading. So now, I started thinking that perhaps my daughter would like the occasional book, especially the two fast and easy reads, (hardly serious literature I thought but ideal for commuting reading on the bus from London to Cheltenham). And so the copies of “Riding Lessons,” and the soon to be posted “Flying Changes,” when my daughter uttered the “Ooh a sequel!” were duly allocated to her on the proviso that they subsequently be sent to my sister, the other avid rider (and reader) in our family. Actually, my sister is the only one of us that belongs to a sensible book club where you all actually read the same book at the same time and meet to discuss it.
My last read, “Mr Pip,” excited me more than any of the books that I have read in a while. I was delighted by the unusual quality of the prose and on reaching the mid point of the book, I confided to my mother how much I was anticipating her response and that it should be wending its way across the pond in no time. The immediate response wasn’t what I expected; a pause and then a puzzled query, “but how have you got that book?” It transpires that my mother had the very same book selection already set aside for me!
