For the first meeting of the Online Article "Book" Club, we'll be discussing Elif Batuman's wildly popular New Yorker article from 2018 about Japan's rent-a-family services.

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After talking about an online article “book” club for over a year, I’m finally making it a reality. I’ve assembled a small group of online article enthusiasts in the Brooklyn area, and we’ll be huddling in my small one-bedroom apartment for our first meeting on February 27th.

The article we’ll be discussing is over a year old: Elif Batuman’s “Japan’s Rent-A-Family Industry,” which was published in a 2018 issue of The New Yorker. The piece was wildly popular when it was first published, but since I don’t have a subscription to the magazine (I just sneak the 2-3 free articles I’m able to access every month on their website) and am generally behind on all the articles that are out there, I only learned about it a couple days ago when I was listening to an old interview with Batuman on the Longform Podcast.

I’ve loved Batuman’s work since I read The Idiot and met her in person at an Atlanta book festival. I’m interested in how she writes, what she writes about, and how she thinks. She’s witty, she’s smart, she’s perceptive. And only she can write about Japan’s rent-a-family industry with the intelligence and empathy the topic deserves.

At the core of Batuman’s article is the idea that a rental family can be more real than a real family, that an invented or fake relationship still evokes real feelings. I can’t wait to dissect the piece with the “book” club.

• Our first meeting is Thursday, February 27, 2020 at 7pm

• Check out the discussion guide to get an idea of what we’ll be talking about.