Tuesday, July the 13th, 2004
back to: title, date or indexes
Book groups and reading clubs have become immensely popular in recent years, so it is unsurprising—if pleasing—that various Hooting Yard Study Groups have sprung up on at least three continents. As their name implies, the Study Groups adopt a more rigorous and earnest approach to texts than the often dilettanteish approach of the average book group. In Winnipeg, for example, where a group meets on a weekly basis, they have thus far spent six sessions on a close reading of the Istvan & Zoltan stories. (See the Unhelpful Index to locate these on the site.) The Dobsonians, a gathering which meets monthly in Ülm, devotes itself only to those items which refer to the out-of-print pamphleteer. Helpfully, they are at work on a catalogue raisonee which they have already entitled the Codex Dobsoniana, though how many years they will take on this valuable work is anybody's guess. Meanwhile, in some godforsaken Antipodean outpost, a trio of readers meet every Thursday to pose each other questions about the previous week's contents. They report that they have been scribbling both the questions and answers in a notebook and that they will photocopy it and send it to me when the book is full.
I noted that buyers of Microsoft's Encarta encyclopaedia are invited to join something called Club Encarta, and it seemed to me that all these study groups ought to come together under an umbrella Club Hooting Yard. I am working on a thoroughly exciting membership pack at the moment. If you would like to join, or to affiliate your existing study group, send an email to hooting.yard@btopenworld.com for further details.