What Makes a Good Book Club? (Or, Do I Really Have to Like These People?)

“Books were safer than other people anyway.” – Neil Gaiman, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”

Book clubs are odd things – each one takes on its own personality and no two are the same. Some are the brain child of one person who chooses all the books, hosts all meetings and leads discussions. Some are a book club in name only and they talk about the book for five minutes (if that) and then spend the rest of the evening talking, eating and drinking wine – but I guess they have to call it book club because it sounds more productive than wine club. Some meet sporadically or when the mood strikes. Some read only books of certain genres – new releases, classics, social causes. And some are consist of people who are not friends in the real world. Sometimes this last one sounds very intriguing to me.

Think about it – once a month you meet with seven or so other people where no one has spoken over the past month. And I don’t mean a local bookstore or library run book club with lots of people – I mean one where everyone is committed to gathering monthly and it is a small enough group that you are intimately talking for those two or so hours. You don’t know what you have in common or where you may be at loggerheads, as least until it comes up while discussing a book.  Because you are not invested in friendship with these people and you are not worried about how your response would be received, you can say you hated a book and no one is phased. In fact, you can have an no holds barred debate without concern over feelings being hurt.

Sometimes that sounds delightful to my argumentative side but there is something about books that I find just too intimate to leave to interactions with strangers. While I have no problem, to my teenage daughter’s chagrin, of telling a stranger at Costco who is eyeing a book that “it is worth it, buy it,” I don’t know if I could meet monthly with people with whom I could not go deeper. If you are a book addict/lover/willing to sacrifice sleep to finish the book/I-have-chosen-a-good-book-over-a-night-out-with-friends kind of person, you know that talking about books must go deeper than plot points. As a person of faith, I often find my spiritual life intersecting with what I am reading and it feels false not to mention it. If you are reading a book about an adoption and you have a parent with adopted children in your book club, she will be compelled to talk about it and you want that to get a richer meaning to what has been read. If a book is just on the page and then left behind after it is finished, was it worth reading if the group you were with didn’t invite and encourage you to go a step further?

When I moved to my current home, two of my neighbors invited me to be part of their book club. One of their members boldly challenged the group that they were not diverse and needed to look outside themselves for new people. When I was presented as a candidate, they said: “she is a protestant and a literature teacher – we don’t have one of those!” I kind of dug that. As I was – and still am – a busy mom of three, I really didn’t have time to join a book club that was more, well, wine club. After visiting once, I realized two things: 1) the group was a good mesh of women who cared deeply for each other but didn’t always see each other between meetings and certainly didn’t always see eye to eye on books.; and 2) they read books that were worthy. Win-win. Women who choose books on rotation and if it is picked, you have to read it. Women who loved “The Hunger Games” and others who couldn’t get past the kids-killing-kids part. Women who adored “The Book Thief” and then visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum as a field trip. Women who roughed it through “Crime and Punishment” together. We have lawyers,  a cancer survivor, a widow raising two kids, Catholics, protestants, a women with a doctorate in theology, a literature teacher , East Coasters transplanted to the Midwest – and every member is a traveler who brings back bookmarks from around the world for the rest of the group. Women with struggles, women with loss, women who share. 

I guess a book club worth having needs to have members who refuse to be surfacey in that they only discuss the book but refuse to let themselves agree merely for the sake of agreeing or be vulnerable. And they better read something worth your time. A book club may not always agree on a book, but isn’t that why we read together – to be challenged, to have our beliefs strengthened and force us to know why we believe what we believe? To know each other deeper and to learn patience, listening skills and, above all, care about each other – all while reading a book? Well, and perhaps share a glass of wine too.

 What makes the best part of a book club to you? Close friends or friends who are mostly linked through the book club? A book club where people discuss, defend and perhaps argue? A book club that shows its strength when something happens to a member outside of reading? Would love to hear your book club stories…and, of course, what you are reading.