Like me, you’ve probably seen posters all over Kentish Town advertising the Byte the Book club at Map Studio Café. Like me, you probably make a mental note to go ‘at some point’ and then promptly relegate it to a far-flung corner of your brain alongside plans to cycle to work, perhaps, or write a cook book. So it came as something of a shock when my friend Kate reminded me that we were actually due to attend.
When the anointed hour arrived, I was still finishing off Nabokov’s Pnin, and seriously contemplating cancelling. It didn’t help that I had this ingrained prejudice that it would be full of pretentious literary types wearing black polo necks, smoking Gauloises and writing theses on obscure middle English prose. (I actually studied English Lit at university and felt slightly sick at the prospect of discussing literature again with these people – you know, in case I said ‘the wrong thing’).
But, as it turned out, the attendees came from all walks of life with refreshingly varied interests. A few of them hadn’t even finished the book, which didn’t matter at all. It’s all super-relaxed; made up of a mixture of hardcore regulars and ones who dip in and out and – phew! – I couldn’t see a single polo neck either.
One bookclubber, an engineer by trade, made comparisons between her father, a Russian émigré in South America, and our protagonist Timofey Pnin, a Russian émigré in North America. Another, a doctor who said she had no experience analyzing literature, swiftly showed a knack for new observations, rather than parroting theories she’d read in literary criticism. Oldest member? Probably seventies. Youngest? A sweet eighteen. The thing uniting us all? Why, a love of books.
The club is run by Justine Solomons, the founder of Byte the Book, which aims to connect writers and readers ‘in the digital age’. Justine does a good job of managing our motley crew, although we’re meant to be shifting to a system where the person who proposes the book (which is democratically chosen) is supposed to lead the discussion. That hasn’t quite happened yet. Oh well.
Anyway, my guilty pleasure is people-watching so it was interesting to see how people look for different things in books. One science-focused bookclubber hated Pnin because it wasn’t a traditional novel with beginning, middle and an end; another, who clearly had a passion for language, quoted passages that had struck him as particularly well-written. (He may not have been so happy with a contemporary author though – apparently he only reads books written by dead people.) Personally I loved the novel – so much so that I was inspired to read Nabokov’s Lolita afterwards, another classic that had been on the backburner for a while.
Many attendees were knowledgeable about local history and we probably spent as much time talking about this (how the roads in Inkerman Conservation Area are named after the Crimean war, for example) as we did on the book. I guess it’s a little bit chaotic in this respect, because we’ve ended up discussing a multitude of subjects – not always related to the book – but personally, I find these diversions fascinating.
Next up, on Mon Nov 26, is Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. I’d like to tell you something about it but once again, I suspect that I’ll be leaving it till the last minute, as is my wont. But even if I don’t manage to finish it, I’m resolved to going back again next time. If you love reading – and you love Kentish Town – then I recommend you grab a copy of Mister Pip and come and join us for the next one.
Byte The Book Club meets on the last Monday of the month. The next one is from 7pm on 26th November and you can book your place here. Map Cafe is at 46 Grafton Road.
Words: Noella Bello Castro
