Emily's walking book club July 2020 newsletter
Effi Briest on August 2nd and the future of the book club ...
Dear walking book clubbers,
I have really enjoyed corresponding with many of you over lockdown - thank you for sending me your thoughts on Middlemarch, other books, and life in these crazy times - it has been a great relief to feel this community is still going strong.
As we emerge from lockdown, I see the future of Emily’s Walking Book Club as being a little more spread between our actual meetings and an online community based around these newsletters - I think this will give us the flexibility to keep on going responsibly and responsively to the ever-changing coronavirus situation.
There will be monthly walks (unless Government advice changes) with new safety measures in place, alongside webcasts and newsletters full of discussion about the book for those who aren’t able to come to the meetings.
The walks
On 2nd August, there will be a walking book club on Hampstead Heath to discuss Effi Briest.
These are the measures I think are sensible to keep us safe:
We will meet outside Daunt Books Hampstead, not inside, so the whole event will be outdoors.
Your place must be reserved (and paid for) online using the new Eventbrite page here. This means:
We will be cash free.
I will be able to contact you after the event in case anyone has been in touch to say they’ve tested positive for Covid 19.
I will be able to limit numbers.
Numbers will be limited to 20 walkers. We will walk in groups of no more than 6 - in practice, the groups tend to be smaller than this anyway - and we will keep a distance of at least one metre between walkers.
You are welcome to wear a mask.
Do not attend if you have a temperature, a new continuous cough, or think you might have Coronavirus (obviously!).
Please contact me if you have further suggestions for safety measures and I’ll try to include them too.
The online community
In spite of these precautions, I completely understand that many of us may feel meeting in person is too risky, and numbers will be limited in any case.
So, inspired by your warm reception of the Middlemarch webcasts, I will to continue to make webcasts about the books, including points made on the walks, to help those of us who can’t come along feel included. I will try to include some footage from the walks. There will be space for your comments, and I love hearing your thoughts by email, so please keep them coming, and I’ll add these into the discussion too.
The newsletters will be better than ever with:
a webcast about the book and the walk
more discussion about the book
information about the author
links to relevant pieces
ideas for further reading.
With this in mind, I hope that some of you might be able to support Emily’s Walking Book Club by paying an annual subscription of £15 for these newsletters. These are lean times for many of us, so of course if you can’t afford this, don’t worry about it - you will still receive the newsletter! It is just that if I am going to allow fewer people to come on the walks, and put more time into creating content for the newsletter, then I need to find a new model of earning. (NB. The lowest amount this newsletter publishing platform will let me charge per year is £20, so I have set the fee up as a 25% discount of this - to make £15 - sorry if it looks a little confusing when you click through.)
In short:
To come to our Effi Briest meeting on 2nd August, please book your place on the Eventbrite page by clicking this button.
If you can afford it, please consider paying an annual subscription of £15 for this newsletter, which will be better than ever. You can do this by clicking this button. Thank you.
Our next meeting, with new social distancing measures in place:
Sunday, 2nd August 2020, 11.30-1pm
From: Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB
Suggested fee: £5
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
This utterly engrossing, horribly tragic, realist novel is a great German literary classic to discover. Naive young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an ambitious civil servant, who’s twenty years her senior. Their daughter Annie is born, but the Baron has little time for his new wife, and she falls prey to the seductions of womaniser, Major Crampas. The affair is soon over, but years later it will come back to haunt and undo them all…
I’m excited to find a way to keep us all feeling a part of our walking book club. Let me know what you think of the new plan!
Looking forward to hearing from you about Effi Briest, and to seeing some of you on 2nd August.
Emily