TONIGHT! :: Heroes Discussion Group: BLANKETS!
Oh yes, as Phil Collins said, “Tonight, tonight tonight! Oh-ohhh!” Yes Phil, tonight will indeed be alright, as Heroes Discussion Master Andy Mansell leads another book club discussion. This time we focus on Craig Thompson’s extraordinarily successful memoir Blankets. This is a book that’s not only a critical and market success, but a big entry-point for female readers into comics, which is always great.
Andy will be kicking some knowledge tonight, March 4, at 7.00 at our store. All you need to bring is yourself, a copy of the book if you have one handy, and a good attitude. Bonus points if you bring some questions, which will save some of Andy’s breath–after all, he’s got quite a slate of discussions to do throughout the spring!
Oh, I don’t think we need to worry about Andy running out of things to say. I won’t be able to make this one, though.
Andy,
I wanted to say that I very much enjoyed tonight’s discussion. It was insightful and thought provoking, as always. I just wanted to let everyone know about the idea we discussed earlier, which was to have the group vote on the books we discuss. The group can suggest a book they would like to have discussed, and then we compile the list and put the nominees to a vote. In my brother’s book club the top 6 books are what they read fro the next six months. Since we have fewer people maybe we could say the top three or something? The person who nominates the book would be the one to lead the discussion. It just a thought, of course. If we wanted to do this we could vote on what we wanted to discuss after “Pluto.”
These are good points Lee, and we (on the Heroes staff) appreciate any input we can get from customers and regular discussion group attendees. As for the choosing of new titles to discuss in the group, we generally do take a vote and try to focus on titles that more than one or two people show an interest in. That being said, we can’t possibly discuss every book that people want to. For instance, I’m a big fan of Manu Larecenet’s “Ordinary Victories,” and think it would make for a great discussion group. But the fact of the matter is that it’s a book that not too many people have shown much interest in amongst our customer base. So we have to take those things into consideration when we decide which books to discuss.
In the case of our upcoming discussions on R. Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” and the Pluto mangas, those are both examples of books that we have had to frequently re-order, because there is such a great interest and demand for those titles. Plus, those books present numerous themes which can be delved into. This is an example of why it’s difficult to discuss certain superhero titles. Some books are more cut and dry than others. We at Heroes certainly appreciate the discussion group regulars – it wouldn’t exist without all of your interest. But ideally the discussion group is an entity which we can hopefully over time use to encourage new attendees and customers to participate in.