Announcing: Tinned Fish Book Club #1

"The Slip" by Lucas Schaefer is the summer pick.

Summertime is generally regarded as the best time of year to get reading done, so it feels like a good entry point to announce the first entry into my lil’ book club.

For the next month or so, we’ll be reading The Slip by Lucas Schaefer. I loved it so much that I decided to not wait until fall or winter to start up the Tinned Fish Book Club. I considered waiting, especially since I’m a few months out from my own debut novel coming out, raising a baby, and also just trying to live in the year 2025, but Schaefer created a book that had me going “Oh shit, yes” with each page turn.

Maybe it’s because I’m still high off last year’s experience of loving Rita Bullwinkel’s Pulitzer finalist Headshot, or I’m generally just a fan of fiction that uses boxing to explore larger themes, but Schaefer pulled off a really tough act by making a book that’s funny and edgy, but also says something. It’s the sort of book the literary heads and people who only get around to reading a few novels a year so they want some plot will love. Ron Charles of the Washington Post called it a “Sweaty masterpiece,” and I think that says all you need to know about why I picked it for the summer book.

So here’s how this will work. The Tinned Fish Book Club is for paid subscribers only. We’ll read the book starting July 1st, and go until about the first week of August. Between now and then, there will be a couple of reading updates—again, for paid subscribers only—with some of my own personal thoughts on the book, as well as some insight from members of the club that I’ll pull from the ongoing chat hosted on Substack. I’ll also include a couple of special posts looking at other work including movies, books, and music, that I think help make the experience of reading The Slip even more enjoyable.

Sooner or later I’ll add in things like a live component to the Tinned Fish Book Club, but for now, we’ll wrap things up at a TBA early August date with a livestream talk between me and Lucas.

I think that’s it. If I forgot anything, there will be updates for paid subscribers. And for those of you that might want to join up, you can subscribe the old-fashioned way for $50 bucks a year…or you can get a free subscription if you spend $30 and pre-order my book Kaplan’s Plot.

You can pick up a copy of The Slip from your nearest indie or wherever you purchase books from. If we get enough people doing this, my hope is that some nice online retailer or publisher will step on and offer Tinned Fish Book Club discounts, but that will take some time to arrange since I’m a one-man show who is literally holding a 13-month-old as I type this.

That’s it for now. Subscribe, buy The Slip, and let’s talk about it. Simple.

Update: I did forget something! If you decide to pre-order Kaplan’s Plot, e-mail me a copy of the receipt at jasondiamondmelt@gmail.com and I’ll get you squared away!