Last month I posted on instagram, “What if we started a book club?” and to my surprise a lot of people were very interested (close friends, friends I don’t see as often and a few that I don’t know too well yet).
I think a lot of us in our adult lives lose touch with reading. When we are young, reading is encouraged and enforced with compulsory literature classes, summer reading assignments and standardized testing. A lot of this early reading can feel like a chore but every so often magic strikes, and you fall into a book and the book devours you, changes you. It’s an incredible experience.
As adults, there is no compulsory reading and really no encouragement either. I feel like we’re pushed to be on our phones all day and compare ourselves to everyone else. We are reading all day but how much of it is valuable, how much of it holds our attention longer than seven seconds? To put down your phone and pick up a book can feel like a revolutionary act.
That’s a big reason why so many wanted to join the book club. They used to have a love for reading, but somehow that love hasn’t followed them into their adult life.
My hope for the book club is that people find their love for reading again. I’m personally excited to talk about books, read books that I usually wouldn’t pick out and have a reason to spend time with others.
For our first month, I said I would pick the book and I’d host book club at my home. I didn’t expect picking the book would be so stressful! My criteria for the book was the following:
- available in paperback
- spooky in some way (because October)
- under 400 pages
- page-turner but has depth
After reading many book reviews, I landed on Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It’s about a traveling theatre group in post-apocalyptic America. As I’m writing this, I have not started the book yet. I’ll be starting the book tonight! Of course, starting a book club made me also want to code a rotating 3D book because why not.
If you are interested in what else I’ve read, I post book reviews in my Instagram story highlights and I also post my reading on GoodReads
About the 3D Rotating Book I coded…
I followed SuperHi’s tutorial How to make an interactive rotating 3d cube with CSS and Javascript. You can view my codepen below or here for the full HTML, CSS and JavaScript.