Online culture magazine The Rumpus is launching a fairly unique sort of book club this June. For $25 a month, members will receive an unreleased book to read and review–the best review will be published on the site. There will also be a moderated discussion with the author.
Rumpus editor Stephen Elliot explains the idea: “It’s neat because we’re going to have a discussion about new books, rather than waiting to be told what books are approved for cultural consumption. It used to be that only people in the media got advance copies of books but that wall has come down quite a bit. Now everybody’s a reviewer.”
Everybody’s a reviewer, and The Rumpus becomes, in a way, a micro-bookstore. But it is a neat idea, and we’re interested in seeing how it plays out. The first book is Citrus County, a new McSweeney’s title by John Brandon.