Book Club discussion

The Dark Tower draws nearer. After this book only two remain in the series. The narrative has also sped up; the black thirteen is play (I think the black thirteen is something of the 'one ring' two the dark towers mordor... regardless, it looks to be part of the endgame).

So, Book Club (I) is (am) committed to reading this full series through to the end. I'm kind of hoping to do it before the movie comes out, and I'm trying to avoid anything about the movie, but I'm not sure how possible that is. I'm planning on taking a break before tackling the last two books. The premise of book club was supposed to be to try new books, different types to some degree, or at least have some sort of rotation, but I've conscious that if I put the dark tower down too long I won't go back.

The next book to read is Jonathan Franzen. I was doing some internet browsing and avoiding work the other week and I found a magazine article/essay written by Franzen called "Perchance to Dream" which was subsequently retitled "Why Bother?" The why question was referring to the question of why bother writing a novel. This brings me back to the intro to the Dark Tower series. I hope my memory isn't too far off on this, but I seem to recall the intro saying that there are two kinds of authors: those who write for themselves, and those who write for others.

I think I don't really like idea of authors writing either for themselves or for others. The Dark Tower series so far, is an incredibly dense, intermeshed series of events in a highly original world, but, what does it all mean? I'm not sure I'm really in a position to say. But at the end, some books leaving you thinking about the narrative, and what happened in the story and how the events went. And some leave you questioning other things, life. I've been wondering about "Why bother?" from a reader's standpoint. The why bother essay talks about readers having some sense of leading a more enriched life because of reading, which even if it's not true, seems to give readers some source of (smug?) self-satisfaction.

I definitely ripped through the last 100 pages or so of the book and stayed up a bit later last night. I at least get some source of satisfaction out of reading this book series if I'm doing something like that. I guess I'll see how smug I'm feeling after reading The Corrections.