Manly Manly Manifesto

"If you meet a despiser of books, you may suspect him, by virtue
of your office, to be no true man; and, for such
kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them,
why the more is for your honesty"
- Dogberry, Much Ado About Nothing  Act III, scene 3



Welcome to the Manly Manly Book Club.  Welcome to the dawn of a new era, where manly men shed the wrongheaded shackles of modern faux-man society and take up the most solemn, most forgotten, most manly of all manly pursuits--the reading of a good book.  Our goal is that after participating in the Manly Manly Book Club for 4 years, each member should have the equivalent of an undergraduate college education ...  from Harvard, not SLCC.  Wait, no, from Oxford or the Sorbonne.  Harvard is our safety school.

Meetings: the 2nd (usually) Thursday of every month.
Location: Depends on the host of that month.  Could be a house, a diner, a river, a shooting range...
Food: is consumed.  Voraciously.  And usually in a somewhat potluck fashion, but the main course is usually provided by that month's host.

Nomination and Voting Process:
Each manly man will nominate 5 or 6 books that he would like to read and thinks the others might enjoy also.  The other manly men will then vote on each nomination, giving points in order of preference.  For example, if there are 5 books, then your top pick will get 5 points, your next pick will get 4 points, and so on.  Once everyone has voted, the points are totaled, and the book with the most points is the one we will read.  Everyone lists their nominees at the same time, votes on each others books, so we then have a list of books to read for the next few months.  Once we've gone through the winners, we'll have another round of nominations.  Browse through past blog posts to see how this works.

Eligibility:
Anyone is welcome to join our meetings, except for girls.  They are wonderful, but still not allowed.  However, in order to nominate books for the next round of reading, you must have attended at least 2 meetings during the previous round.


"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood cheap whiles any speaks
That ate the flesh of animals and talked about books with us upon Saint Crispin's day"
- King Henry V, Henry V, Act IV, scene 3

The Manly Calendar