The Ultimate Book Club

The think-tank if:book London launched the ultimate book club yesterday–a digital book conversation complete with links, reader comments, marginal annotations, and extensive indexes.

Seven literary women are reading Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing’s classic novel, The Golden Notebook together. The website allows other readers to join the conversation in forums, and the comments are carefully indexed by page, author, and subject. The team includes journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz and novelist Helen Oyeyemi.

Hopefully more reading communities can follow this example. In the meantime, here are a few marginal thoughts from novelist Naomi Alderman, reflecting on Page 83:

“I don’t especially like any of the characters in this novel so far. I do like that in the novel, though. I think people get far too hung up on having fictional characters be ‘likeable.’ Better they should be interesting; and these people are very interesting indeed.”

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