Smarty Pants Virtual Book Club is a book club for people who want to read more. It’s a book club for people who want to read the smart books people talk about in their smarty pants language. It’s a book club for people who want to read smart books but feel intimidated or are afraid they are missing the big picture. It’s a book club for people who can’t or don’t want to engage in person for a variety of reasons and who think virtual engagement is quite lovely, thank you very much. Smarty Pants Virtual Book Club is a virtual book club led by a trained Ph.D. and former literature professor who thinks discussing good books should be fun and engaging and that anyone can become a smarty pants and enjoy great literature.
You and your Smarty Pants friends will meet via Zoom on the second Tuesday of every month from 6:30 to 7:30 pm, starting on January 11, 2022. And don’t worry that it’s already started – you can jump right in at any time.
Want to join? Fill this out, and we’ll send you more details to finalize your membership!
What Do Smarty Pants Read?
January – February
Good Girl Breaking Bad
You can’t have it all, so this book is pre-chosen as we get up and running…. Aaaaannnnd….
Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (Lydia Davis, translator)
March – April
Ghosts of Presents Past: Afrofuturism and Fantasy
What if Black writers reimagined history and the role of African Americans in it? What if Black folks had better or different pasts, presents, and futures? This theme explores the beauty of the Black imagination.
Patreon Subscriber Voting Choices:
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead
Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters
Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi
May – June
“You get an award! You get an award! Everyone gets an award!
What do the big prize committee members know that we don’t? Are they extra smarty pants? Let’s dive into a novel that has won a major literary prize, like, say, a Pulitzer or Booker. Or a novel by a Nobel Prize winner. The underachievers.
Patreon Subscriber Voting Choices:
White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (Booker Prize)
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Pulitzer)
House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday (Pulitzer)
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (Pulitzer)
Sula, by Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize for Literature 1993)
July – August
Summer Reads for Nerds: YA Novels with Substance
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi (2000)
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (2005)
American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang (2006)
The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline (2017)
Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi (2018)
Monster, by Walter Dean Myers (1999)
September – October
Smart AF
Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Trial, by Franz Kafka
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
November – December
It’s the Busiest Time of the Year
November (Pick One)
So Long a Letter, by Mariama Bâ
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Invisibility Cloak, by Ge Fei
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The Lady with the Toy Dog” by Anton Chekhov
“The Minority Report” by Phillip K. Dick
“A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri
“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges
“Like a Winding Sheet” by Ann Petry
“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker
You can become a DIVA Smarty Pants for FREE, but to get a little extra something-something, you can become a member on Patreon.
Here’s how it’s going to work:
FREEBIE: Join and attend live Zoom discussions.
NERD HERD ($5/month): You are busy and might miss a discussion or two, or you want to read in your own sweet time. You might also be a super nerd and like to go back and rewatch things and take notes so you can be an extra smarty pants at that next cocktail party when you want to impress your boss or level up on your smarty pants flirt game. You get all of the benefits of the Freebie tier plus access to recordings and transcripts of all of the discussions. You also get access to discussion questions ahead of time.
ILLUMINATI SMARTY SECRET SOCIETY ($10/month): We all know that the Illuminati run the world and make important decisions. If you join this tier, you know that knowledge is power, and you crave power. What powers do you get? You get all of the benefits of the other tiers. You get to vote via Patreon on our next book. You get access to a mini lecture on the book and why it’s important and worth a close read. You can also engage in Q&A in the Patreon app as you read along – it’s like being the teacher’s pet without the bullying. This is basically the cool kid’s table for nerds.
EXTRA SPECIAL ILLUMINATI ($15/month): You get nothing extra at this level, except DIVA’s undying love and gratitude. You get all the benefits of the other tiers and the warm fuzzy feeling of giving just a little extra.
Proceeds Are Allocated As Follows:
10% – Head Smarty Pants Book Club Leader Fee
20% – Accessibility (captions, ASL upon request, transcripts)
70% – DIVA