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Welcome,
everyone.
Thank
you for taking a break from extreme body modification websites
and YouTube remixed movie trailers to wander over to our neck
of the woods. I hope you find the site entertaining and informative.
Since this letter coincides with the launch of the Hipster
Book Club, I thought it'd be best to provide a little background
information about us and why we have such an offensively egotistical
name.
The Hipster
Book Club came into existence as a LiveJournal community in
October of 2003 as a way for me to solicit book recommendations
from all of my friends at once. I realized that I could walk
into a record store and find what I wanted, and know what
was coming out, but walking into a bookstore left me constantly
returning to the same authors and being largely ignorant of
about 98% of the shelves' contents. I simply wanted a place
I could write sterling bits of blog-literature like, "Dudes,
is this book any good?" Or, "I read this book and it was totally
good, dudes."
However,
I soon watched the enrollment of the website explode from
the population of people who have seen me naked to a much
larger group to whom I have to describe how I look when naked,
as they've never met me in real life. The membership is well
into the 2000+ range now, which absolutely stuns me. We never
went out and advertised ourselves. People found us by word
of mouth or by looking up book-related interests, and they
were probably drawn by the stupid name.
Which
brings us to the name. It's a joke. Well, it's a joke I misappropriated.
The name actually came from a real-life book club that my
co-editor Yennie (who does the real work around here) had
with two friends of hers. It was slightly different, though;
there was another "s" in it somewhere. Still, they used the
name in a similarly facetious fashion. I liked the name enough
to steal it and pretend it was my own.
Some
would say that ironically calling something "hipster" is,
in itself, a hipster thing to do, but let's avoid this circular
argument. My reasoning was like this: Nothing is less hip
than a bunch of dorks on the internet talking about how they
like books. In addition, I've found that people I know are
very passionate about what they like, be it music, movies,
or literature. As we all know, nothing is less hip than enthusiasm.
So calling such a club the "Hipster Book Club" would be extra-funny.
Just like calling a weekly Dungeons & Dragons meeting "Babe
Central." Maybe it's more like calling the times you watch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes in your room "My Dates with
Willow"—not that I have done either of these.
Of course,
none of that matters. What matters is that we have a strong
urge to share the things we love with other people. This website
came from that love. The unexpected and exponential growth
of the LiveJournal community sent signals to us that there
is an un-spoken-to group of people out there who don't want
to read book review after book review of the new Danielle
Steel and John Grisham novels (sorry, Mom). This group doesn't
necessarily believe that simply being a best seller is any
indication of "quality." This website may become analogous
to college radio: While all other outlets are spouting the
same recycled chart-toppers at you, we hope to bring you fresh
perspectives, personal experiences, and buried treasures.
Also—and I can't speak for Yennie or the rest of our
staff—I would totally love to use this site to become
an internet celebrity. If I had to pick though, I guess I'd
go with the "sharing and enjoying good books" thing before
the internet celebrity thing. Call me an altruist.
We hope
you'll come back on a regular basis to look into the things
we care enough about to share. The goal, we hope, is that
these things which we enjoy will bring some measure of happiness
and enjoyment to your life. To be completely honest, I'd love
it if it became "hip" to share the things you love, and to
read, and other such sappy pursuits. At any rate, enjoy the
site. Reading's still cool, no matter what The Man tells you.
<3,
Kyle
(March,
2007)
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