So this one is for my law and law-adjacent peoples. I’m just going to throw it out there: Bookclub, but with a legal focus.
Hear me out. I know y’all practitioners already do A LOT of reading, but most of y’all, in my experience, are giant fucking nerdburgers who miss having the time to read fantasy and sci fi (I see you, boo). This is where I step in. CV time: I have a PhD in literature and have taught literature at Victorian unis since 2012, I have a law degree, worked as a researcher and paralegal at a firm for seven years (decided not to practice because I saw how the sausage was made), and I’ve taught law to creative industry professionals since 2018. I’ve been running a relatively successful book club for about three years. I am also a firm believer (my students might call me evangelical) in the power of stories to help us understand the world and ourselves better.
Y’all are also professional readers and storytellers. You are also working in an industry that can suck the joy out of everything it touches. Let’s bring some joy back to reading the law.
Enter Lady Chatterley’s Book Club (one of my fave censorship trials, buy I’m open to changing the name). This is a pilot program for the first five months of 2020. Ideally, it would be based in the Melbourne CBD, and would run once a month. We would read a novel and a case (I’ll create a reading list based on responses) and use the literature to frame our understanding of both the set case and of legal practice/the world more generally. I’m limiting the pilot program to 10 seats, so if you are keen let me know asap. Feel free to retweet/share with friends/frenemies/colleagues/ who you think might be interested.
I’m proposing the following genres of literary texts:
Memoir and Life-Writing
SF, Fantasy and Spec Lit
Trashy crime and Thrillers
Queer Literature
YA and Bildungsroman
Classical lit and adaptations
Shakespeare and adaptations
If you are keen, shoot me a response/email/DM and let me know your preferred reading list.
The Wayward Girls' Book Club 