The Daily News

LFCA Latest Issue: Friday, September 25, 2009.

Latest Post on BlogHer: Parenting after Infertility.

My Status: Fed Josh's almonds to the squirrels. They needed them very badly.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Marching With the Barren Bitches Book Brigade--Tour Five

And it's baaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Here is the master list for the fifth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Club. What is the Barren Bitches Book Club? It's a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Kid
Author: Dan Savage
Start Date: June 7th
Question Due: July 11th
Question List Sent Out: July 12th
Post Dates: July 17--19th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List
(click on any of the links below on July 17th to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Kid. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on July 11th. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Melissa)
The Annex (Josh)
The Twinkies (Stacie)
Karaoke Diva (KD)
Twisted Ovaries (Vanessa)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Miss E's Musings (Ellen)
Out, Damned Egg! Out I Say! (Millie)
It Could Take Three Months (Ms. C)
Making Twiglet (Diana)
Kicking You From the Inside (Kate)
Baggage That Goes With Mine (Baggage)
Looking for Two Lines (LJ)
Child Bearing Hips (Cece)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Waiting... (Sandra)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
All Things Deb (Deb)

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on July 11th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you're interested in participating.

(2) read The Kid by July 11th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a "yes" or "no" answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on July 11th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on July 12th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry. You will find out if you are posting on July 17th, 18th, or 19th (you can choose).

(5) on July 17th, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour--by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

Check out the sidebar of my blog for information about future tours if you wish to purchase books at once or read ahead.

3 comments:

Mary Ellen and Steve said...

I am interested in joining again.

Stacie said...

OK, my question:

In the current political debate about gay marriage, one argument against gay marriage that is often trotted out is that marriage is for making babies. Straight sex, and with it heterosexual marriage, is privileged because it comes with the possibility of procreation. Dan addresses this, writing, "Babies make straight sex more important than gay sex…even when straights are having sex that couldn’t possibly make babies (oral, anal, phone, cyber), the fact that these people could make babies under other circumstances or in other positions legitimizes straight sex…[however] straight sex absent fertility has no larger significance… No babies means no miracles, no magic.” If you are straight (and my apologies for the heterosexual nature of this question) did finding out you weren’t fertile change your feelings about sex and marriage? Do you find that sex is different once the possibility of fecundity has been stripped away from it, and how did the realization that you and your partner are not fertile together affect your feelings about marriage in general and your marriage specifically.

Monkey said...

I want to join the book club. Thanks!