When book clubs go fishing–literarily speaking–for their next book club choice, chances are they will settle on a safe catch like the latest novel that's has managed to rise to the top of some best seller list. That's why the Sunday Arts Section (SAS) Book Club is looking at new and innovative ways to tackle your book club choice. This month's choice might just surprise you.
We started the year with some innovative inspirational books: The Late Starter's Orchestra by Ari L Goldman and Your Life Calling by Jane Pauley. Both highlight ways to redefine your life, especially in middle age. February featured The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self Control by Walter Mischel.
In March, we're taking the plunge with biographies, the perfect choice for a book club. Don't say you're not fond of biographies, because that will just prove that you're not as up to date as you think when it comes to biographies. Biographies now feature some of the most innovative and exciting writing that literature has to offer.
Gone are the days when biographies felt like a longer version of an encyclopedia entry with a boring timeline of facts beginning with where someone was born followed by the highlights of that person's life–not to mention a splash of background information about the famous person's ancestors that we really don't care to know.
The whole emphasis in biographies has changed from timeline facts to a thematic focus that puts a person's life in perspective clearly and creatively while showing readers the significance of a person's life in a particular period of time and how that life impacts on our own lives today. Biographies are bridging the gap between past and present in new and innovative ways.
Authors of biographies are now capturing their subjects in a way that makes them feel like they have been lifted from the pages of great fiction literature. You'll also find that biographers are no longer limited to historians. Journalists are writing more biographies as well.
Once you get hooked on biographies you'll want to read more of them so this month I'll give you my top ten list of favourite biographies. In the meantime, our SAS Book Club choice for March is Stokely: A Life, by Peniel E Joseph. This is the definitive biography on Trinidadian-born, American civil rights organiser Stokely Carmichael, who later changed his name to Kwame Ture and became a Pan-Africanist leader.
What is most interesting about this biography is how Joseph, a historian, pays close attention to Ture's Trinidadian roots. You don't have to have a keen interest in the Black Power Movement of the 70s or even history in general to appreciate this biography.
In many ways, this is a book about fashioning a leader and understanding the role cultural roots play in creating that leader. This is a book about how leaders find their voice and how that voice is defined by roots.
There are questions about Ture's life that make fascinating book club discussions.
Consider this: Stokely Carmichael carved a place for himself among the "holy trinity" of the American Black Power Movement along with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X–so why did Malcolm X and Martin Luther King reach legendary status while Stokely Carmichael's name faded in the background? Answer that question in your book club.