Ever since the launch of my novel, A Million Miles from Normal, in April this year, i’ve been doing a mini book club tour kind of thing. I’ve basically been cruising around where invited, visiting book clubs in Cape Town. Chatting about the book, answering questions etc.
It’s been a fun thing to do. I’m a fan of the book club. A bunch of chicks, a whack of books, a couple cases of wine. Good snacks. What’s not to like?
So this last weekend I had the honour of being invited to The WWW 203 Book Club.
The WWW stands for Wine, Women and Words. Or Women With Words. Or Women With Wine. Yeah, they’re flexible like that.
The 203 part is slightly more interesting. They have this fantastic system. As per most book clubs, every meeting someone pops down to the book shop and picks up a whole range of new books. Then they go through a culling process. Each person at the meeting takes one of the books and first reads out the back cover blurb, then opens the book to page 203 and reads that page. Then based on that they vote whether or not to keep the book. Culled books get returned to the book shop, the rest get read and passed around.
Their theory is this, loosely synopsised:
They figure that the person who writes the blurb on the back cover is not actually the author, and so is therefore not always to be trusted. And they know that the first page and first few chapters will have been very well scrutinised by the publishers to make the book as sellable as possible should someone pick it up off the bookshelf and read the first page.
So they believe that by the time the book reaches page 203 it has most certainly hit it’s stride, and the writing on page 203 should be a good reflection of the story itself.
It’s an interesting theory. And I like it.
I also like the WWW203 Book Club. They have an incredible collection of books, 99% of which i coveted. In the end I borrowed three books from them. Because the six hundred thousand million unread books already stacked up on my bedside table and various book shelves and pieces of floor around my home are not enough. The unread book simply holds too much of a pull on me.
It’s almost as bad as shoes and sex. You can never get enough of them.
These are the three titles I borrowed:
Imraan Coovadia’s second. You hand me at Imraa…
Aparently The Journal of Dora Damage is a history of porn – i couldn’t resist it.
Not sure what this is about, but the cover appealed to me and the girls all raved about it.
Highlight of the afternoon:
LADY 1: I promised my husband I wouldn’t have more than one glass of wine.
LADY 2: Don’t worry, it will be fine, we’ll just keep refilling that same glass, and then you will have only had that one glass of wine.
Like I said, what’s not to love!
Thank you for having me WWW203 Book Club. It was a blast.
Interesting concept – sounds like a fun book club. Incidently, I just paged to page 203 in your book – that will definitely get anyone wanting to read the book to find out what the mysterious surprise is 🙂
when i write other books i’m now going to put tons of special attention into what happens on page 203! make it really extra-juicy.
Thanks for sharing your time and passion with us, it was great to meet you. I can’t wait to read your book. I read the last bit to my hubby – inadvertently busting myself…..oh well.
Look forward to seeing you again.
glad you had a fab time 😉
until next time…
… and of course the next book!
@rahle – bust. sorry i can’t accept your follower request on twitter. twitter has a glitch which won’t let me accept new followers *ggrrrrr* they are aware of it and trying to fix. will accept soonest.
@suediz – looking forward to it. and loving the imraan coovadia!
I love it! Please do let know what Cooking with Fernet Branca is like, looks very lekker 🙂