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Every
year, my local Rotary Club holds a used book drive in the
parking lot of a nearby supermarket, and I, like a deprived
bookworm, descend hungrily upon it. The process of finding
books in the mess requires a lot of careful scanning and endlessly
shoving aside copies of The Bourne Identity and Michael
Crichton's Fear, but the results are always worthwhile.
One year, I returned with an amazing haul that included some
choice works by Phillip Roth, Oscar Wilde, and Roddy Doyle,
as well as Cynthia Kadohata's out of print first novel, The
Floating World.
 But
easily my favorite find has been a pretty blue hardcover of
Aimee Bender's An Invisible Sign of My Own—a story
about a young woman named Mona Gray who teaches math at her
old elementary school. After a mysterious illness leaves her
father weak and depressive, Mona similarly retreats from life,
sabotaging every advantage and every relationship that comes
her way. Easily arrested by fear, she has a nervous habit
of knocking on wood and finds talismans and numbers wherever
she goes.
Quirky
without stumbling into absurd, Bender's book is a subtly magical
tale about the way people spend their lives alone, even in
the presence of others. While the story is sweet and affecting,
the most intriguing aspect of the book is not written by the
author. It is, in fact, scrawled by a series of complete strangers.
Just inside the front cover are the names of each person who
had read the book before me, along with what I assume was
the date of completion. There are seven names, not including
my own, and they are all women.
I had
no idea if these seven women were all friends sharing the
same book or if they were strangers. The romantic in me was
inclined to believe the latter, though; the idea of sending
a book out into the world to be discovered by others felt
as magical as Bender's book itself. After all, books—and
most especially, good books such as this—are meant to
be shared with others, not filed away on a bookshelf to gather
dust. The website BookCrossing.com
is even founded on the premise of users setting books free
into the urban gray yonder, leaving them in public places
to be found—or, more specifically, discovered—by
someone who might not otherwise know of the story.
Thus,
I decided to continue the tradition by passing the book along
to others—and what better forum to do so than a book
reviewing website such as the Hipster Book Club, which was
founded on the idea of sharing great literature?
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| The
eight signatures (including my own) inside the book. |
There
are differences between this sharing of the book and the methods
used by BookCrossing, however. For one, the sharing will,
to an extent, be controlled and monitored by the website.
And to those of you worried about what this means for book
sales, you
can rest assured in knowing that Bender herself is aware of
the book, and judging by the way her face lit up at the sight
of the names, I'd say we have her blessing. She even signed
it for us.
As of
the writing of this article, the book has been passed on to
my good friend Betsy Scott. If you would like to be a part
of this book's future, please send an e-mail to hipsterbookclub@gmail.com.
In the subject line of your e-mail, please write "I want to
read An Invisible Sign of My Own." Until we can figure
out a more efficient way of handling this (without giving
away your address to a bunch of strangers), we'll handle this
via e-mail.
FOR NEXT MONTH...
Excited as I am to watch the future of this book, I am also
equally intrigued by its history. The journalist in me wanted
to find out more about these seven women and what compelled
them to record their histories with the book. Unfortunately,
I was initially deterred by difficult handwriting and overly
common names, and my initial attempts at Google-stalking turned
up no results. However,
mere days before publishing this article, something in my
gut—a journalist's intuition, perhaps—told me to
try again. This time, I found a positive match, and I managed
to contact one of the women on the list. At the moment, I
am working on talking to the women and learning about the
book's history. Check back with us next month to find out
more.
(August,
2008)
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