Jose-Andres Alegria Welcome to the first meeting of the Everyday Owl’s Book Club! So why are we starting an online book club? Isn’t the point to meet up and talk about the book? Yeah, but I read a distressing statistic in January about how little people are reading nowadays. A Jenkins Group’s survey from 2003, found that “33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college. 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years, and 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.”
Yeah, the study was a long time ago, and the data is probably different now, but there is still a decline in people reading books. So my challenge with this is to hopefully get a few people interested in some books this year.
Not everything that we will be reading may be to your liking, and that is okay. Give it a try or skip that month. The last thing I want is for someone to think they need to power through a book. This isn’t school so you should be enjoying yourself.
This is the first article I’m writing about Eddy’s Book Club, so it will be short. In the future, the next article is going to talk about the book we just read. We will cover some cool things that happened in the book, implications about the endings, and maybe whether or not we enjoyed the book.
I’m going to try my best not to sound too uppity while I write. This isn’t some English literature class. It’s going to feel more like conversations with your friends at the bar after watching a really good movie.
Nothing makes me feel more lonely than when I have found something I like and have no one to talk to about it. You should see the group chats I have with my friends. We are almost always talking about the newest anime episode that came out or movies we think the others will love. That’s what I’m going for with this series of articles. Just something fun to participate in and something cool to talk/ read about here.
For February, we are reading “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa” by E.B. Sledge. Yup, leave up to a bunch of guys to pick a war book for the first book to read. Don’t worry – the next one will be a different genre altogether.
With the Old Breed follows US Marine Eugene Sledge. It depicts his time in the Pacific War during World War II. My friends and I have already started reading, and we are three chapters in so far.
What I like about this book is that it depicts what war was like back then. Three chapters in, and there are moments where I want to put paint on my face and fight alongside them in the heat of those jungle islands, but then the true moments come when Sledge shows that work comes at a cost. At times, this book is a great recruiting tool but is also a deterrent at times. Highlighting the deaths of people as if they were just cannon fodder. Smart, brilliant, and capable people died, and for what? But I’ll get more into the details next time I write for Book Club. Until then, you have a whole month to read this book. March 1st is your deadline.
Join us in exploring some really cool titles, new and old, at Eddy’s Book Club. Also, check out the Top 3 Books Everyone Should Read.
Don’t want to read at all? (Shame on you.) Maybe try a new anime. While it’s not reading, it is still a storytelling medium. Check out some recommendations here.
3 chapters in! Great read!