No problem, fellow reader! Allow us to share our mitigating strategies. We have discussed this challenge at length and noodled several options. Do we bag the Booker assault altogether and pursue something new? Do we vote to skip certain titles? Do we deviate from our set purpose and oh-so-easy method of reading to a set list, when we know that certain undesirable mountains lurch menacingly in our collective futures (we're talking to you, Ondaatje)?
Our thought is no... and yes. Here's the deal. From mutual experience, we like the idea of reading to a previously-set list. It eliminates the monthly scramble to select a book. It focuses and organizes us around a theme and allows our monthly reading to connect itself to a larger related literary set, to which we find ourselves frequently referring, comparing, questioning, revisiting. It exposes us to books that few of us would admittedly read on our own. It seems to regulate and improve attendance in a way that random monthly book selection did not; people know ahead of time to what they have committed, and therefore, they come.
How then, to handle situations where members have already read or simply can't bear to read a selection? We fear that, in the immortal words of Tevye, if we bend too far from our tradition, we will break. So we will not alter our official reading list. However, in dire individual straits, we invite and even encourage authorial substitution. If a member cannot abide an author's Booker winning entry, we hope they will enrich the discussion by reading another work by the author and therefore contribute to the discussion by offering us the perspective of the author's additional writing. How often in our conversations do we ask each other if we've read other works by the same pen, if the affectations that puzzle us are unedited faults of the author or deliberate acts of genius meant to shatter and delight us? By reading into their canon, members can deepen our understanding of the writer and therefore, of the work we are discussing while feeling they are participating without the torture of the book they simply could not read (ah, memories of the Atwood's The Blind Assassin, may it gather dust far away from me).
Alternately or additionally, members can, as so many often do, read commentary and interview with the writers about the month's work. While by instinct we usually save these contributions for the latter part of our discussions, we always value every additional perspective at the table and often find in these comments new layers for dissection and insight.
The bottom line is this: Read. Attend. Discuss. In any sequence and quantity you can in any given month. Each member has to date walked in with books unread, partially read, and fully read. And they have contributed and felt sated from the experience of participating. That's what we hope the continue giving and receiving in the group.
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