vol. 9 issue 0.5

Fellow readers, welcome to the 2023 Sipped Ink summer read-along; here we begin the ninth volume of this annual tradition. Whether it’s your first time joining in, or you’ve been with us in previous years, I want to welcome you and thank you for signing up. I started this project in 2014 for almost entirely self-serving reasons, and it’s always nice to see other people excited about it.

The purpose of this introductory email is simply to provide a little bit of context for the novel we’re going to be reading, and also to give you the schedule for the next six weeks. First, however, let me briefly introduce myself for the benefit of those who don’t know me. My name is Adam Wood, and Sipped Ink is my way of combining a lifelong love of fiction, with a hobby of online cultural comment. Put another way: I have a Masters in English & American Literature, and I’ve been writing about the arts (and various other subjects) online for 20+ years. It turns out, that’s all you need to convince a few impressionable friends to read a novel with you every twelve months.

And so to the novel at hand. As you (hopefully) know by now, the book we’re reading this year is Demon Copperhead (2022) by American novelist & poet, Barbara Kingsolver. Across more than a dozen published works since the 1980s, Kingsolver has established a reputation for work acutely attuned to topics of social inequality, grounded in the geography of places with which she has lived experience.

Perhaps her most famous novel to date — The Poisonwood Bible (1998) — considered the experiences of American missionaries in mid-century Africa. It was shortlisted for multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Kingsolver won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction here in the UK, for her novel The Lacuna: a story of art, politics, and literature, set between the United States and Mexico. She has been nominated for that same award no fewer than four times (The Poisonwood Bible; Flight Behavior (2012)), and became the first person to win it twice — under its new name: The Women’s Prize for Fiction — this year, for Demon Copperhead.

This novel, which also saw Kingsolver awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is partially a reimagining of Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850). I know of at least one of our number who has been attempting to make their way through Dickens’ c. 880 page opus ahead of beginning Demon Copperhead. I myself am currently ten chapters in, and will be aiming to read the two in tandem as far as proves possible, or profitable for our purposes. However, it is my strong suspicion that no foreknowledge of the plot of David Copperfield is required to enjoy Kingsolver’s novel, and I imagine there are a whole range amongst us, from those who know it well, to those who know it not at all. It’ll be interesting to see the ways in which this colours our reading of Demon Copperhead.

Finally, some specifics on how the read-along works. Each Sunday for the next six weeks you will receive an email from me discussing a chunk of Demon Copperhead. We’ll be reading at a pace just a little under 100 pages-per-week; here’s the exact breakdown of what each week’s email will cover:

• 09 Jul — up to p.91  /  end of ch.12
• 16 Jul — up to p.182  /  end of ch.24
• 23 Jul — up to p.275  /  end of ch.34
• 30 Jul — up to p.362  /  end of ch.43
• 06 Aug — up to p.456  /  end of ch.54
• 13 Aug — up to p.546  /  end of novel

The page numbers listed here apply to the mass-marked paperback edition published by Faber in 2023. If you are using a hardback or ebook edition, page numbers may vary, but — as you can see — each weekly milestone falls neatly on a chapter break, so hopefully confusion will be minimal.

As previous participants will tell you, the Sipped Ink read-along only has one golden rule: please do not publicly discuss the novel beyond the current page milestone. If you find yourself so infatuated with the book that you simply cannot stop at the points listed above, that’s OK. Conversely, if you want to save up all of the weekly emails, and read the novel in a single sitting at a later date, that’s fine with me. The only thing I ask is that you respect others’ mode of engagement. For the duration of the read-along, if you’re going to be posting publicly anywhere about Demon Copperhead, please stick to the milestones.

That brings us to the question of participation. The best way to contribute your thoughts will be to email me at readalong@zioibi.com (or simply hit reply to any of the weekly emails (including this one!)). Please keep in mind when doing so that, unless you specify otherwise, I will assume you’re OK with me including your contributions in subsequent emails to the group as a whole. I wholly encourage you to do this — it’s one of my favourite parts of this whole enterprise. I can’t always respond to every email, but I promise you that I’ll read every single one.

In the past I’ve experimented with other fora for discussion, but success has been limited, and particularly in the present social media landscape I don’t think it’s viable this year. I’m on Mastodon if you want to say hi, but if you never click that link I promise you won’t miss anything — all the Sipped Ink action will happen in your inbox, just like the round-robin email chains about punk music that I was on in the mid 90s.

That’s it for the intro. If you still have questions, remember you can always hit reply and drop me a line. Enjoy the first week of reading, and I’ll see you right back here next Sunday to talk about the first 91 pages / 12 chapters of Demon Copperhead.

✌🏻

— Adam