A Write All Nite book club would meet to discuss the book *while* we’re reading it.

Even if the vast majority of book clubs are glorified cocktail hours with mere dashes of literary couture (so all involved can feel cultured? Whatever it takes to support art!), allow me to pretend that *some* clubs out there are in fact designed to facilitate deeper engagement with the work at hand.

Obviously heftier tomes would more fit this bill, but bookended conversations — which are probably the norm? — miss a crucial part of the reading experience: our (hopefully) ever-changing, while-we’re-reading conceptions (yes, plural!) of all the things a book could be up to before we’re finished with it. As I’m reading, my understanding of what a book’s trying to achieve, and how it goes about doing that, tends to be repeatedly and radically overhauled, again and again, chapter after chapter. And I’m only one person! Hearing a group’s multiplicity of possible frameworks could broaden our relationship to the book. PLUS, it provides the opportunity for more positive interpretations to bolster the enjoyment of naysayers.

By waiting until the end of the book to converse, some participants forget their earlier takes, or later chapters will have proven these takes short-sighted. Airing our shifting responses can have the effect of chronicling a book’s mutating forms.

All of which is to say: Write All Nite will start writing about books *while* I’m reading them.