For last 25 years of my life, starting in high school, I have been a pretty heavy reader of literature. Over the years, I have been to many a book club.
Most of them are exceedingly dull. I am not sure why - it’s as if everyone means well, but they just all seem to fizzle. Much of the time I encounter 4 kinds of people:
People who want to sound smart and always seem to say things with that in mind.
People who actually are smart and can comprehend well, but are too timid, or just naturally reserved to say anything very often.
Loudmouths who always miss the point and appear to have sub optimal reading comprehension.
Pedants who want to pick apart and talk about the structure all day long and miss the big picture.
I guess my ideal book club is one where people have a complex emotional connection to literature and can articulate it well enough to have a meaningful discussion focussed on everyone’s unique reactions to the work. So far I have found one club that is like that, but it seems exceedingly rare. On the other hand, maybe I’m just too picky and impatient with people. Anyone else have similar experiences?
I want to love book clubs. I’ve been in two, and they’ve both been hit or miss for me. The first one I joined, well, muscled my way into, I heard about through a colleague and basically invited myself to join. I was the youngest by around 30 years, and if I made any kind of commentary, they’d all look at me like I was a performing monkey. Ugh. I kept it up for a year or so, but never got much out of it.
The other I stumbled upon on Craigslist soon after moving to the Bay Area. It was very small, just me and three others, and it folded when two of the members left to move to Portland. sigh It was a really nice group, similar ages and situations in life, but we didn’t survive the exodus, despite trying a few times to recruit new, like-minded members. I miss it! If we ever move to Portland, maybe I’ll attempt to resurrect it
I feel like both clubs contained meaningful discussion of the works in question. I should add that in the first club, the group was run through the Adult Ed Centre, which selected the books and mailed out paper copies to local groups. Good for luddite oldies. The second group, we took turns selecting what to read by hosting for the month and preparing a shortlist, which the others would vote on. I read lots of things I wouldn’t have sought out on my own, and mostly enjoyed them.
I participated in one ongoing one for it’s duration of about 9 months. Then my schedule changed. I enjoyed it. I’m very underexposed to literature, so I found that it motivated me to read books I normally wouldn’t pick up. Nobody was trying to be a smartypants.
I’d do it again, but I spend so little time actually in DC.
I’ve been in the best book club in the world with 10 other women for about 15 years.
We read only fiction, and at one of our meetings each year we pick the next year’s books. Each woman hosts one month at her home (often with snacks appropriate to the setting of the book), and we take one month off. The group is smart, well-read, insightful, articulate. We’ve got several consultants, a couple of nurses, an assistant district attorney, three artists, a school psychologist. Ages are from mid-40s through early 70s. Most are married or partnered; most are parents. We draw names for Christmas and exchange presents at the December meeting. Four of us are Jewish, four Catholic-- this variety comes in handy for explaining some things that come up in the plots. Several are friends outside of the book club, but at meetings, we really do discuss the book, at length and in depth.
One of the most interesting and best things about this group is that it’s very rare for everyone to like the book. We’ll go around the room with comments and inevitably, no matter how much everyone loved the book, there will be one or more vehement dissenters. “God, I hated this book! I didn’t care about any of the characters! I was bored out of my skull!” And after all these years, no one is shy about expressing her opinion. Sometimes it will be more evenly divided, but there have only been a handful of books that everyone has loved. Makes for some great discussions.
And it’s fascinating to go in there when it’s the book you picked and find out that some people hated it! It would be so boring if everyone agreed all or even most of the time. The club makes me read books I would never pick up on my own.
ETA:
Mr. Nylock, I think my book club **is **exceedingly rare.
I’ve been in a book club for around three years with a group of grad school friends. We meet regularly and read mostly fiction, but the focus is usually more on career planning and catching up than the book. It’s one of my strongest social outlets.
I would love to find a good IRL book club. I’m a heavy reader, and I enjoy talking about books online, whether here, on social media, or on sites like Goodreads (add me if you’re on there!), but I love the idea of sitting down once a month for coffee or beers with a group of book friends and sharing our impressions.
I’ve been in a book club for about 10 years although I took a bit of a hiatus during college. It’s great. The format is very similar to Thelmalou’s book club except we just devote 10 minutes at the end of each meeting to choose the next book. In January we do book and movie, so we read a book and then have an extended meeting to watch the movie version and discuss the two in parallel. It’s quite fun especially when you get someone who loved the book and hated the movie or vice versa.
I’ve been in a book club with a group of friends for about 4 years now. Each month a different member chooses the book and then hosts the meeting. Usually the meeting will be at their home and they provide light snacks and wine. The wine is very, very important to the success of our book club. Sometimes a member will switch things up and host at a local restaurant instead of their home. We always take December-January off so there is no pressure to be completing a book during the holidays. We usually have a nice dinner out together at a restaurant instead of meeting to discuss a book.
We have a pretty diverse group, mostly peers in terms of ages although we did have a regular member who was of retirement age. The group is probably around 14 people but we really only have 5-7 who are active and attend every month. It is somewhat informal but has evolved into generally the same format: Everyone provides a grade for the book using the good old fashioned school grades system. Then generally it is open discussion on the book. The host may or may not have prepared discussion topics/questions to help. We usually end by sharing some of our favorite quotes from the book.
We only have a few rules:
1.) The host provides light snacks. Over time, more and more often the host prepares dinner for the group but it isn’t required.
2.) The host provides wine, minimum of 2 reds and 1 white. Wine is very, very important to the success of our book club.
3.) The host selects the book for the month. It can be fiction or non-fiction. The only real rule is it must be a stand alone book. We do not allow selections that are the first in a trilogy, etc.
I think the monthly reading threads are the best thing on this board, but for some reason, the idea of real life book clubs has always left me cold. Too social, I think. I just want to listen more than talk.
Also, I would dread having to read stuff other people picked out. I don’t have so much free time that I’m willing to spend on books that suck.
I’ve been in two book clubs.
One was pretty good - we read a decent selection of books, and most people actually read them and were able to discuss them. But a number of the core members moved away and the central member got kind of tired of being the one responsible for everything. And it kind of fizzled out.
The other one was horrible. A number of the other members had terrible taste in books, so the books that got selected were nearly universally awful (among them “The DaVinci Code,” “Left Behind,” and “The Celestine Prophecy”), which would have been bad enough - but most of the time I was the only one who had forced myself to read the book. So, there would be 5 minutes of “discussion” followed by celebrity gossip of celebrities that I didn’t really follow.
