the casual-ass internet book club: april 2k13

March was a success for the Casual-Ass Internet Book Club! In that I read and posted about it! Every month I manage to do this feels like a super big accomplishment and this month I managed to do it kind of early, so I basically feel like I just won some sort of gold-plated award.

I read more books in March than I’ve been averaging and I kept finding myself thinking, “Oh, hooray, more stories about white people.” in a particularly bored voice. And I was really irritated about it and I pledged on Twitter to do better in both my reading and my writing. So I started reconfiguring a couple of things in my first novel and I sat down and actively added books by people of color to my Amazon wishlist and decided that I would make sure to choose a book from an author of color for April. And so I did!

From Amazon: One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

So here’s the plan as always!

1. Read the book!
2. Post about it on the internet no later than April 30th
3. Link me to your post in the comments here
4. I’ll do a round-up post on May 1st-ish
5. We can have a casual-ass comment party about the book
6. I’ll announce the next book
7. REPEAT

Your site, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, even Twitter is fine! (Just Storify and link!) Whatever works for you!

This is a very casual, kick-back, low-expectations, low-effort deal! I just like the idea of reading the same book and then hearing what people think about it. That’s literally it. FUN, YES?! Good.

If you have suggestions for the next book, please please please comment with them and tell me! I’d appreciate if it was available on Kindle, but that’s the only requirement.

Share this with people if you do it! Tell me if you’re going to do it! Tell everyone!