Literary Book Club - Midnight's Children

Thanks to Snarkasm for this pic

It has been a rough weekend, my dear readers. I am at the point where I feel like I am just keeping my head above water. And yet, it is not all bad. I am making some great progress...but possibly at the expense of my sanity.
At last, I am finally getting around to blogging about my Book Club experience. Some of you may remember that a while ago I was asked to help lead a discussion of Rushdie's Midnight's Children for a local book club. They found me through the department, and I was more than a little flattered at the invitation. I should be grading papers, but I am not in a good head space to be assigning grades - believe me, this procrastination is for my students' benefit.
Anyway, so I spent a couple happy weeks in August rereading Midnight's Children and preparing some material for discussion. You may also remember that I have never attended a book club as an adult. I have been invited to at least one, but it never aligned with my schedule. So I did not know what to expect. Let me preface this by saying that these ladies have been attending this club for the better part of two decades, and are very well-read individuals. They also start off with appetizers and wine (yum). Then they begin the discussion by going around and stating briefly (in 20 words or so - which no one obeyed) what they found compelling about the book (so as not to get stuck with "I hate it" or "I love it"). This was interesting to me, and also fun. Seeing this book through new readers' eyes was a pleasure. They all liked aspects of the book - the narrative structure, the characters, the details. They asked me a few questions here and there, and I occasionally got a word in to ask them some of my questions - how they perceived this or that. Not all of them went over well. I had to keep trying to reformulate my questions because they sounded too teacher-y. Also, I had to keep telling myself that this is a long, complex book, and they were not exactly approaching it like my students or fellow grads would. Still, I was pleasantly surprised with the turns of the conversation. They made some great observations about the story (which made sense to them despite its twists and turns), and most of their questions had to do with the "real" history about which Rushdie was writing. So I brought some maps and "facts" and such to help fill in the gaps since they all confessed to not knowing anything about the history of India and Pakistan after the partition. They also liked discussing his influences - and it became like a game to try and pick out his literary allusions: Wizard of Oz and The Arabian Nights. And I can clearly see Marquez's influence on Rushdie in this novel (more to come on that dear readers).
I had ended up preparing way more material than we would get to - we got side-tracked here and there. We ended the evening around the table eating delicious Indian food with mangoes for dessert. We talked about my work and my teaching - it was all very fun. One of the things I will take away from this experience is a comment that one woman made about he e-reader device. I might have mentioned it before, but she said that half way through the book she couldn't take reading it on the device (I think it was a kindle or nook) because of Rushdie's run-on prose style. So she picked up the actual book to finish it. Interesting, right? It did not occur to me that it would be even more challenging to read a book like MC on a tiny screen.
Not bad at all for my first Book Club experience. I also have ample material with which to teach Midnight's Children...oh ambition, ambition. Right now I just need to survive October. Wish me luck and do not be surprised if I skip a day or two this week. In the works, however: a literary review of 100 Years of Solitude. So stay tuned.