VCGS Book Club

Greetings fellow arts enthusiasts! This is Joel Thomson, the vice-chair of the guitar society,

Over the last few years I have been trying to expand my knowledge and understanding of the western artistic canon. One thing I've been focusing on is the importance of the novel; taking on some classic works by celebrated authors who you likely wouldn't find on the drug store shelf. The only problem is I have very few people who I can share this interest with. So I've decided to try something, and (ab)use my position in the guitar society to try and drag a few people along the journey with me. I've decided to start a book club.

If you are interested in taking part, please fill out the form below and we will contact you. There is more information about my vision for this below if you want to know more.

Please complete the form below

Some Details

The focus, or direction, that I want this club to take will be pointed at works with a great deal of established artistic merit. Commercial success will be only a tertiary consideration here, if a consideration at all. This will inevitably mean that a lot of the books we read will be old, which I do feel is in keeping with the association to a classical music society. However I don't want to discount the notion of reading things that are new, or at least not centuries old.

My hope is that we will meet in person, though exactly where and when and how often I am a little more vague on still - likely something like once a month, probably at a café unless someone has a living room that would work. I also don’t have any compunctions about people doing this via audio-books, nor do I have a problem with cliffsnotes/colesnotes - in fact I would probably recommend their use for some older titles as so much context will just be utterly lost to us without their use.

I've never been part of a book club before, so this will be somewhat of an experiment that we will figure out together. With that being said I will impose that we start at what is often considered the beginning of the European novel, going back to the beginning of the 17th century - the first title on the list will be Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

Titles