ReadingGroupGuides.com - Round the World Book Group Roundtable

Round the World Book Group

Alec McInnes’s “Round the World Book Group” in Edinburgh, Scotland, celebrates its fifth anniversary and 60th book in March. In this interview, Alec describes his group’s remarkable approach to reading, in which they read their way “around the world country by country, from one country to a neighbor by preference.” With fascinating detail, he talks about their literary journeys and the future “trips” he and his fellow members plan to embark on together.

Q: Does your group have a name and/or a theme? How long has your group been in existence?

A: We are the "Round the World Book Group." As our name suggests, we are reading our way around the world country by country, from one country to a neighbor by preference. However, because of the absence of a literary tradition in some places, we occasionally have to jump onto a metaphorical plane or ship to make our way to the next country. We were all attracted to the book group when it was advertised since we all had an established predilection for world literature, though none of us read that exclusively. After the current book we will have to do this with a vengeance. We have finally reached Japan, the last country of the old continents, and will be flying off to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and Canada.

From there we will be going to the USA, South and Central America and the Caribbean before heading back to Europe to do the countries we missed. We started in Italy, since "all roads lead (or should that be "read"?) to Rome.” From there we headed east and south to the Middle East before going on safari round Africa and back into Asia, all the way to Japan.

We felt it would be silly to try to find one representative book each for Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA (in sequence of visit), so we decided on this trip that we will read a book by a member of the native peoples of each country. Even that is hardly representative of what is available in those countries. Once we have gotten back to Italy, we plan to set off on another tour to these four countries, but this time we will read round each of them, state by state or province by province.

Next month, in Australia, will be our fifth anniversary and our 60th book.

Q: How many members do you have? How many men, how many women? What age are most of your members?

A: We currently have five consistent and regular members, though I understand that several former members read along with us by following our blog or the e-mails that we send out each month. We started as a reading group run by the Ottakars Book Shop on George Street in Edinburgh. However, after about two years, their lease on the building expired, and at the same time the Ottakars chain was taken over by Waterstones. The local Waterstones branches would not host us, so we decided to keep going by doing our own thing (see below).

Our numbers in the early days went up to as many as 25 on occasion, but because of the cold and wet Edinburgh winters, they have gradually dropped to "we brave few," the famous five stalwarts who have only missed the odd meeting because of holiday commitments or the occasional business trip.

As I said, we are five. The other four are ladies. Our ages vary from mid 30s up to me, the oldster (in body, but not in mind --- that's about 30), knocking on 62. Apart from a couple of months about two years ago, I have always been the only man in the group. That is not quite true since, when we started at Ottakars, one of their male staff was the gofer, arranging purchase of the books, etc., and leading the discussion. He left to become the assistant manager in another branch, and I was given that role by the other members of the group.

Q: How often do you meet? Where do you meet?

A: We all live in Edinburgh, Scotland. We meet once a month, usually on the first Thursday. Since we are a small group we can be flexible about this to avoid someone having to miss a meeting because of holidays, etc. We meet in the Roxburghe Hotel on Charlotte Square in the West End of Edinburgh, in one of their open lounges. It's an old hotel on the square --- the square and all of the buildings being an integrated whole --- designed by the great architect and interior decorator Robert Adam. The whole district in which the Square is located is a World Heritage Site. Charlotte Square hosts the Edinburgh International Book Festival every August. Perhaps some of your members have visited the festival, or are planning to visit. You would certainly be welcome to drop in on our meeting if your visit to Edinburgh coincides with that. You can't miss us. We're the ones enjoying ourselves with books piled on the table.

Q: Do you eat at your meetings? What do you eat? Who brings the food?

A: We don't eat at the meetings other than some crisps or other nibbles provided by the hotel. We do, though, have a glass of wine if we're not driving, tea if we are. I live a 10-minute walk away, so I never have to drive.

Q: Who leads the discussion? Do you use reading group guides?

A: I generally, but not invariably, set the ball rolling. All of the members are quite capable of doing that, and of airing their points of view about the books we have read. We all make notes while we are reading and use these to introduce points for discussion. We tend not to use reading group guides since, as you might imagine, there aren't too many guides to literature from places like Senegal, Somalia or Uzbekistan.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: We read literary fiction by someone native to the country where possible. Most of these are in translation, although a number were actually written in English because the author moved --- usually to the USA --- or became a refugee. Many chose English in order to get their message out to the greatest number of people.

Our selection of literary fiction is largely dictated, both by preference and by availability. Translation costs are so high that only literary fiction tends to be translated into English.

Q: How do you choose your books? Do you choose one new book at each meeting, or do you choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time?

A: Most of the books that meet our criteria are in short supply and most are out of print. It would be impossible to do what we are doing without the resource provided by the Internet and the availability of these books though Amazon and other similar sources.

My job, as gofer, is to research what is available from each country in turn, locate some critics of each book and, where available, other readers’ reviews. I then present these to the group for discussion and selection. After that I buy them online and am compensated by the other members at the next meeting. We select and buy one book a month, but we are several months ahead in case of difficulty of obtaining the selected book.

Q: What were some of the best discussions or favorite books the group read?

A: We have read many wonderful books as well as some duffers. A few of our favorites are:

Perfume by Patrick Süskind (recently made into a film which totally missed the point of the story)
Closely Observed Trains by Bohumil Hrabal (again filmed, many years ago, but this time wonderfully)
Broken April by Ismail Kadare (Our claim to fame over this one is that it went straight to the top of our favourites’ list before anyone else had heard of him and before he won the first Man Booker International Prize for Literature. We bigheads led the field. We heard him speak at a recent Book Festival event in Charlotte Square.)
God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane (yet another excellent film, directed by the author, so close to the story)
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma
Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
The Translator by Leila Aboulela
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (This book led all of us to reread books that were mentioned by the narrator, and to read several that we had not previously read.)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (recently made into a film --- this one reasonably close to the story, with some notable differences)
Translations of Beauty by Mia Yun (this was our most recent selection)

The above is a selection and should not be taken to mean that the 50 or so not listed are not as good.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: We don’t delve too deeply into the literary merits of a book. We read for enjoyment and take what we can from a book. We note any particularly vivid images invoked and unusual uses of words or word patterns. Most of these are highlighted in our reviews, which can be found on our blog.

Q: What advice would you give to other reading groups?

A: Follow your inclinations. Advice for individual members is “Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion about a book, even if it is opposed to that of the majority. Some of our most interesting discussions have come from that, and minds have been changed because the dissenter saw something in the book that the rest didn’t, or vice versa. Vote for the book at the end of the discussion (average out of 10) and keep a record of books and scores. Publish a blog. It can lead to new members coming along.

Q: Do you have any horror stories, amusing anecdotes, or other special tales to tell?

A: Our one horror story is the book we selected from Serbia. It shall remain nameless here to protect the author, though it is named and discussed on our blog.

Q: Is there anything else unique or noteworthy about your group that you would like to share?

A: We are a very mixed group, from retired and near retired to people working in a variety of interesting and unusual jobs. We all enjoy travel (perhaps the origin of our love of world literature), some having traveled much farther than others.

Other details are on our blog, which can be found at worldbookgroup.blogspot.com. The blog was put together by one of the members who updates it every month with the details of the date of the next meeting and the book selected for reading. I add the group’s review of the book, again each month, though I am slightly behind this month because of work commitments. Doesn’t work get in the way of reading?

ReadingGroupGuides.com interviews special reading groups around the world, spotlighting a different group each month. We hope that you enjoy reading about their experiences and might find some new ideas to try with your group. If you belong to a group that you think should be spotlighted, click here to answer our interview questions.