After years of blogging without successfully participating in or hosting a readalong, I’ve found myself co-hosting reading projects two months in a row. Not that I’m complaining, since it’s a great excuse to read books that have been languishing on my shelves along with some of my favorite bloggers.
This month I’ll be co-hosting an informal readalong of Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon with the wonderful Florinda of The 3R’s Blog.
Why Telegraph Avenue? That is actually a funny story, I think (or, at least a story typical of people who love more books than they can actually read). Last year, Florinda and I both got copies of the book at an author breakfast at Book Expo America. I remember that Florinda was especially thrilled to get an ARC of the book. We both had plans to read it right away… but we didn’t.
When I saw the book pop up on a January list of the books Florinda meant to read in 2012 but didn’t, I suggested a readalong. We compared our bookish schedules and settled on April — 11 months after getting the book in the first place. There’s something delightfully absurd in that, I think.
The book isn’t terribly long, which I think will make a relatively relaxed pace over the next four weeks. Here’s our schedule:
- April 15: Section I (through page 124)
- April 22: Sections II and III (through page 250)
- April 29: Section IV (through page 381)
- May 7: Section V (through page 465)
Our plan is to do a check-in post each Monday on Florinda’s blog (you can find her announcement post here). There won’t be updates here at Sophisticated Dorkiness — we wanted to keep the discussion in one place — but I will be helping out with each of the check-in posts. We’ll also be on Twitter using the hashtag #readchabon.
Like the Possession readalong I just finished, there aren’t any requirements to post updates or anything like that. Just grab the book and join us in talking about it in whatever capacity works for you. Happy reading!
P.S. For those interested, a group of us will be doing a watchalong of the movie Possession on Sunday, April 14 at 7 p.m. CST. The movie is available on Netflix, and even if it’s no good we’ll have some fun Twitter chatter at #readbyatt to make it bearable.
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Whoa, that’s a long book, but I guess that is how Chabon writes! Enjoy the read-a-long! I’m interested to hear your thoughts!
I read this a few months ago with my IRL book club and it generated quite the discussion. Curious to see what everyone will think!