'The Blind Assassin' Wins the Most Votes for Our June Book Club

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The crowd has spoken: The inaugural 1book140 selection is Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. Despite a last-minute push by fans of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story and Jennifer Egan's The Keep, @MargaretAtwood was able to hold on to her lead throughout the voting, commanding 32 percent of the vote to 21 percent and 18 percent for Super Sad and The Keep, respectively.

Some of you are surely disappointed, though I hope most of you choose to read along anyway. (I myself was pulling for Orhan Pamuk's Snow.) Starting next month we'll introduce a theme to every edition of 1book140. We haven't set the schedule in stone, but July might feature the finest representatives of, say, classic horror (H.P. Lovecraft, anyone?), while August might focus on historical non-fiction (mmmmmm ... Doris Kearns Goodwin).

Our goal isn't to get everyone to read every book, every month. (Though we'll reward those who do.) Rather it's to entice a global audience to follow us on this social media experiment, and dip in and out of the club as they see fit.

So what do we do now? "Duh," you say. "First, buy the book. Second, read the book." Right? Not so fast. As we learned last year, it's important to follow a few, simple guidelines. Official discussion will begin on June 1st (next Wednesday). The conversation will be broken down by chapters—#1book140_1, #1book140_2, etc.—both to facilitate better conversation, and to guard people from giving away plot points as they read.

To everyone who voted—congratulations. Whether your book won or not, you helped make the inaugural 1book140 a great success. Thanks, and happy reading.

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