Reading with Others: The Book Club

A year and a half ago, a friend of mine invited me to join her book club. I was thrilled. The book club was made up of twelve or so women, most of whom are teachers at the high school in town. Of these teachers, most are English teachers. This makes us a sort of weird book club. Most book clubs consist of readers and friends who get together and chat about books they've chosen together to read. This is exactly what we do, too. Most other clubs, however, consist of people who read for a hobby on the side. These are people who read when they are NOT working. My book club is made up mostly of people who read for a living. I don't think this makes us a "better" book club by any stretch, but it does make us particularly intense. We talk about foreshadowing, symbolism, Hamlet allusions, and other English teacher-y things. We totally geek out on the little stuff in the books that maybe non-English teachers would miss or not get that excited about.

At the same time, though, our book club is much more about women getting together and socializing than it is about reading. Say we meet for three hours. We spend probably two-thirds of that time just chatting, hanging out and eating appetizers and dinner. Only the last part of the gathering is devoted to the book. Depending on the book, these conversations can be very long, loud and passionate or shorter and more low-key. The conversations also depend on how many of the members were able to finish the book in time. Because most everyone has the same work schedule, however, we can schedule our meetings in such a way that we don't have a meeting right after final exams when everyone is grading furiously. Or we try to schedule meetings for after spring break or shortly after Christmas break so we have time to read on vacation (although this month we're meeting before spring break--yikes!).

There are three things I really love about my book club: first, because each person chooses the book for the month she is hosting, we read a variety of books many of which I maybe wouldn't pick up (or even know about) on my own. I end up very much enjoying these choices though and I feel they help me stay connected to a wide range of books out there. Second, I love the socialization aspect of the meetings. Some of these women I have known for years and have other connections to, and some I only see at book club. All of them, however, are interesting, insightful and fun to be with. Finally, I love the chance to read and talk about reading. As you know by now, my favorite thing to do is lie on the couch and read, so the book club gives me a great excuse to do that.

In fact, my book club is meeting this Thursday, and I have some reading still to finish up. We're reading The Lace Reader, a book I'd never heard of but that I'm really enjoying. I'm only about half way through, though, and I really want to finish it by Thursday, so I'd better get cracking!

--Kristen