Sipped Ink vol 7 issue 0.5

Hello fellow literature enthusiast, and welcome to the seventh running of the Sipped Ink summer read-along. I’m your host and newsletter writer extraordinaire: Adam Wood. Let me take this opportunity, right out of the blocks, to say a large-sized and heartfelt thank you to all of you who have signed up to join me on this journey.

What is Sipped Ink? Whilst a good number of you have participated in (at least) one of the previous read-alongs, we also have some new readers joining us — welcome, welcome — so let me (briefly) set the scene. This newsletter started in 2014 as a forcing function to get me through reading David Foster Wallace’s mammoth novel Infinite Jest (1996). Since then, it has become an annual summer tradition, with a growing group of likeminded readers coming together to read a lengthy novel at a relaxed pace. Each Sunday you will receive one of these here email newsletters from me discussing the week’s reading. The purpose of the introductory email you’re reading now is to tell you just a little about this year’s novel, and to set the reading schedule for the next seven weeks.

The Novel

This year’s selection is A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) by Marlon James. His third novel, it brought James to more widespread attention in 2015 when it became the first novel by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize: an award that it went on to win.

Michiko Kakutani’s review of the novel in the New York Times prepares us for what is to come:

It’s like a Tarantino remake of “The Harder They Come” but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, with maybe a little creative boost from some primo ganja. It’s epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It’s also raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, exhilarating and exhausting — a testament to Mr. James’s vaulting ambition and prodigious talent.

If that sounds like a lot, don’t worry: that’s why we have each other. Between the flaying scene in Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the various horrors visited upon poor Jude in Yanagihara’s A Little Life, and… well, whatever was going on in Bolaño’s 2666, we’ve been through a lot together. Sipped Ink readers are hardy readers.

If you’ve peeked inside your copy of the book (you do have a copy of the book, right?) you may also have noticed that the ‘Cast of Characters’ front matter runs for four pages. You may also have noted that it lists six location subheadings and five different decades. I’ve shied away from books for less, but this too we shall overcome.

The Schedule

As in previous years, we’re going to be reading the novel at a pace of roughly 100 pages per week. I’m using the 2014 paperback edition from Oneworld Publications, so that’s the basis for the page numbers below:

Most of these milestones fall neatly on chapter breaks, which is why some are a little longer than others. Only one is a little fiddly, and that’s week three — there’s just not a great end point that doesn’t stretch the whole schedule out of whack. Don’t fret, I’ll make sure to give you all the necessary detail for each week’s reading at the end of the Sunday newsletter.

Speaking of which, I will leave this introductory missive right here, and I will see you back in your inbox on Sunday 20 June to discuss the first 98 pages of A Brief History of Seven Killings.

If you’re someone who tweets, you can catch me at @sippedink, and I’ll also be keeping an eye on the hashtag #sippedink just in case anyone has anything they want to share. You can also, of course, email me at mail@sipped.ink with your comments and questions.

Enjoy the first week of reading!

PS. A full archive of newsletters will be available here as they’re sent out.