Sunday 12 July 11:00am UTC (Sydney: Mon 13 July 7:00am)

Sunday 12 July 9:00pm UTC (Sydney: Mon 13 July 9:00pm)

A link will be sent out via newsletter closer to the date!

It’s our last week of reading Love’s Work!

Chapter 8, Love’s Work

Agnes Martin’s notes for “On the Perfection Underlying Life”

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We are almost at the end of Love’s Work, so it’s time we pick a date for our group discussion. I know we are all across the globe so I have come up with three different possible dates and times. I will end up picking the two most popular dates and share those in the next newsletter, so make sure to vote before then.

All times below are in UT…

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Chapter 6 Love’s Work Gillian Rose

Illness as Metaphor pg. 1-11 Susan Sontag

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Reading for this week:

Chapter 5, Love’s Work Gillian Rose

Women and Honor: Some notes on Lying Adrienne Rich

“The liar lives in fear of losing control. She cannot even desire a relationship without manipulation, since to be vulnerable to another person means for her the l…

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Love’s Work, Gillian Rose – Chapter 4

Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir 1975

“Everything begins and ends at exactly that right time and place.” Picnic at Hanging Rock

• As always, it’s about what you have time and desire for. Lean towards curiosity. Below is what has intrigued me.

• I suggest you do the reading first, watch…

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I’ve always wanted to be part of a book club that reflected how I actually read. Reading, for me, feels more enlivening and enriching when I follow a more web-like approach. I read a few pages, take some notes, and wonder how this connects to everything else I’ve read, learned, felt and experienced. So here we are!!!

Mirror Book Club is built around that very instinct. It is a reading place for people who want to read, with a pencil in hand, slowly and attentively, and let that reading take them to all sorts of strange, mysterious and intriguing places.

Every six weeks we read one book together (fiction or non-fiction). Alongside the main book, each week I share a companion piece or two: a poem, an essay, a film, a philosopher, an artist. Something or someone that casts the book in a new light. These are the mirrors. Texts and ideas that reflect and refract what we’re reading. It’s what I think makes a reading practice feel much more alive, and ultimately more sustainable. It’s what has kept me reading and learning diligently.

Each week you’ll receive a newsletter with a little context, discussion questions, and writing exercises if you want to go deeper. It is also a place for you to share the connections you’ve made! At the end of the six weeks, we meet on Zoom to chat about our experience with the book, and everything else that came with it.

The books picked will not always be easy. Some might be emotionally difficult or philosophically demanding, but I think we shouldn’t shy away from either. There is so much to glean from difficulty, especially when you have a supportive community around. I hope we can build a supportive and creative community to keep around!!

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THE FIRST MIRROR BOOK CLUB PICK: LOVE’S WORK BY GILLIAN ROSE

Love’s Work is a memoir written by the philosopher Gillian Rose in 1995, which was published before she died of cancer. It is not a cancer memoir however, not entirely so. It is a book about all the other things that come to the forefront when you are faced with mortality. Friendship, love, intellectual life, loss and what Rose calls “the broken middle”: the idea that we must stay in the difficulty rather than flee from it into false comfort. It’s about the labour involved in love and relationships, and the ongoing confrontation with its own limits and fragility.

Rose’s memoir is tender, tough, uncompromising and full of questions. Those questions are what we’ll be sitting with together over the next six weeks.

THE DETAILS

We will start on the 25th of May. I will send out a newsletter every Sunday so you have everything you need for the week of reading ahead.

The zoom call date will be picked three weeks before we finish reading, and will be dependent on the availability of the majority of subscribers.

This book club will be for paid subscribers only. This is one way you can support my creative work, which I am always very grateful for.

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I really hope you’ll join me! I’ve been longing for a community of readers, creatives and writers and really looking forward to where these conversations might take us.

Lastly, this is a low pressure book club. You do not need to have read all the materials, or even the book to completion before attending the zoom call. Although I suspect that reading the book might lead to a more satisfying conversation, I want this to be a space where we can share and engage in whatever capacity feels good.

Talk soon,

N x