For the Love of Book Clubs
If you think about it, education, and in particular English classes, are, to an extent book clubs. Everyone is assigned a book to read and then participate in discussions moderated by a teacher. Which is probably why so many people don't like reading. They view it as homework. Which is why I personally think of book clubs as my own version of BOOK IT! Here we were rewarded for reading with stickers and personal pan pizzas. So what's the reward for book clubs? Getting to get together with your friends once a month to just talk and eat. Just being in the presence of those you care for who also happen to love reading as much as you, even if they didn't read the book, because true book clubs should encourage reading and not punish members if they didn't have time to read the book. I came late to books. I have a few precious volumes of books I read over and over when young, but it wasn't until after I was out of high school that I really started to read. And very shortly my desire to read with others became an obsession. I wanted a book club. I need a book club. And yes, I occasionally went to my mother's book club that consisted of all my grade school teachers because I needed one so bad. I was like Gomez Addams calling into the Sally Jessy Raphael show asking about where the voodoo witch doctors would meet. I even made a fake book club organization for a school project, Literary Linkup, and may have harassed a few of my classmates when they mentioned they were in book clubs. I had become Gomez Addams! But oddly something happened because of this. One of my classmates and I formed a book club, which was eventually dubbed, The Last Word. There were several classmates and friends that came and went over the years. We're now a small core, but through it all, disagreements, reading way more Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Neil Gaiman than I ever thought I would, we've now been together for twelve years this year. Things have changed a bit over the last four years, we're now virtual versus trawling around different cafes, houses, and apartments. But through it all it's about having one day a month where I make time for my friends and discuss what we've read, even if it isn't the book we were supposed to. The different tastes and opinions expands my mind and understanding. We rarely, if ever, agree on a book, and that makes it that much more interesting. So here's to celebrating my book club. Here's to celebrating all book clubs. Over the next few months I'll present just a sampling of what we've read over the years. But I hope you'll find it interesting, and maybe you'll share your own book club experiences.
My friend Jess and I years ago started referring to each other by our Austen handles, aka Misses Jessica and Eliza. In the spring of 2013 I texted Miss Jessica wondering what she would like for her birthday and she had an idea. It just so happened that 2013 was the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. As you now know over a month into my 
Madison College has a wonderful selection of wood type and when pursuing the drawers I found these stunningly large "P's" and was only sad for about half a second that there wasn't three of them, Miss Jessica being one of the co-creators of P, P and P, which is the Pride and Prejudice Colin Firth miniseries watched while eating Pizza. But in all honesty P and P works better. Because this was a quick one-off and not class work, where I was actually doing only two prints, one for me and one for her, I did this during open lab time. I didn't even do a full lockup, I just used some magnets and the showcard press, which is basically a proofing press. Funnily enough I had to do this twice, because I'm not the best at spotting typos when they're backwards. There might have been two "S's" at the end of "Misses" because I was going crazy that day apparently. So, on my second attempt I think I nailed it.
I originally went for too strident a color, a kind of spring green, and went all out metallic gold the second time around, because if gold doesn't say big two hundredth birthday celebration, I don't know what does! For those who do letterpress you might notice that there is actually more texture to the print than just from the wood type. I shall now impart a trick my teacher Beth showed me which I absolutely adore. What I did is I first printed the piece on a heavily textured paper. You pull the paper off and instead of re-inking you print again on a crisp clean sheet of perfectly flat paper. The impression of the textured paper remains in the ink on the wood type and transfers onto the new paper. I use this technique a lot because it just adds something extra, also ironically the textured paper is some of the paper I've used for my Jane Austen series I've been talking about. So this was the first non-illustrative piece I did in tribute to Jane. This was also the first piece for the gift exchange between me and Miss Jessica. Don't worry, there's more to come on that front!
