Book Club Proposal - High Strangeness
March 17, 2016 2:26 PM - Subscribe
Anyone interested in reading books about cryptids, UFOs, hyper-dimensional science, psychic powers, and other weird fringe topics?
The goal here would be to read a book, usually a "classic" of the fringe genre, and discuss it. In order to prevent foilheaded madness, we'd do a book every 4-6 weeks or so. I'd select books based on Amazon availability (so nothing that's long out of print) and would pitch three candidates to the group for the next read.
One thing I would like to strongly suggest is that we go for a "Yes, and..." / "What If?" / "I Want to Believe" approach to these topics. I'd like to aim for the 3am camping feel you get when you know there's no Bigfoot out there, but still you could have sworn you heard something? We can joke and crack wise, sure, as some of these books are unintentionally hilarious, but I want to stay away from derision. Do you think we can do that?
To get us rolling, the first book would be John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies as it gets in to the High Strangeness aspects of the genre pretty deeply. (Unfortunately, the movie has little to do with the book.) Where we go from there would be determined by which of Keel's many, many weird threads we start to pull at in the discussion.
Thoughts?
The goal here would be to read a book, usually a "classic" of the fringe genre, and discuss it. In order to prevent foilheaded madness, we'd do a book every 4-6 weeks or so. I'd select books based on Amazon availability (so nothing that's long out of print) and would pitch three candidates to the group for the next read.
One thing I would like to strongly suggest is that we go for a "Yes, and..." / "What If?" / "I Want to Believe" approach to these topics. I'd like to aim for the 3am camping feel you get when you know there's no Bigfoot out there, but still you could have sworn you heard something? We can joke and crack wise, sure, as some of these books are unintentionally hilarious, but I want to stay away from derision. Do you think we can do that?
To get us rolling, the first book would be John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies as it gets in to the High Strangeness aspects of the genre pretty deeply. (Unfortunately, the movie has little to do with the book.) Where we go from there would be determined by which of Keel's many, many weird threads we start to pull at in the discussion.
Thoughts?
Hell yes. And I think Mothman is a great place to start.
posted by Lou Stuells at 2:27 PM on March 18, 2016
posted by Lou Stuells at 2:27 PM on March 18, 2016
I'm in! I read Mothman just a few months ago, recently enough that I think I could still talk about it...
posted by Zed at 7:11 PM on March 18, 2016
posted by Zed at 7:11 PM on March 18, 2016
Okay, so start reading! FanFare post to go up in two weeks.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:57 AM on March 30, 2016
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:57 AM on March 30, 2016
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posted by graymouser at 10:46 AM on March 18, 2016