Week 9 Assignment: Book Club Experience

In late 2018, I joined a book club made up of a handful of moms from my daughter’s school.  There are currently seven members in our book club, and we meet every 4 to 6 weeks depending on our schedules.  Our book club is as much a social club for friends who like to read as it is a formal book club, but we also pride ourselves on being a book club where everyone reads the book.  Our discussion is lively and covers the gamut, from that month’s book club selection to other books we’ve read since our last meeting to things happening at our kids’ school to current events.  We often meet on Friday nights as a way to unwind after busy, stressful weeks and we have adopted the motto, “What happens at book club, stays at book club.” 

Selection of each month’s book is informal.  Almost all of us use Goodreads, so we’ll frequently look for books that many of us have marked as “Want to Read” to start.  We try to alternate selection so that everyone gets a chance to pick, especially because a few members read books that the rest of us don’t naturally gravitate towards.  Our picks lean heavily toward relationship fiction, contemporary romance, historical fiction and nonfiction/memoir, and almost all our picks have been released in the past year or two.  Several of our members prefer to listen to audiobooks or want books that are available at our library so we try to pick books that are available through multiple formats and/or aren’t brand new releases.  Some of the books we’ve read in the past year include “Beneath a Scarlet Sky” by Michael Sullivan, “Maid” by Stephanie Land, “The Moment of Lift” by Melinda Gates, “Red White and Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston, “The Gown” by Jennifer Robson, and “Nothing to See Here” by Kevin Wilson.  For 2020, we are all hoping to expand our reading horizons and read more back-list titles, so we started with an older mystery, “Open and Shut” by David Rosenfelt.

Meetings usually rotate between someone’s house and going out.  When we are at someone’s house, we all bring a snack to share and there is usually wine served.  When we go out, it’s frequently to a local restaurant for dinner.  Our meetings usually run 2-3 hours with about an hour of that time spent discussing the book. 

Discussion about the month’s selection generally is not formal.  We don’t have a discussion leader per se, but the person who made the selection for the group will generally kick off the discussion.  We don’t bring a formal list of questions for the meetings, but we will often start by discussing general feeling about the book and delve into aspects we loved or hated and see where the conversation takes us.  Since everyone reads the book, we don’t have to set rules about participating in the conversation.  When someone asks a question, the other attendees usually answer first and then discussion will rotate around.  We are a group of opinionated women who have no qualms about speaking our minds, so sometimes we can end up fighting for the floor or we’ll end up having side conversations.  Everyone always participates in each discussion and if someone isn’t sharing their thoughts, they will most likely get pulled into the discussion by another participant (we have several educators in our group who make sure everyone participates).  That being said, there are definitely meetings where someone may dominate a particular discussion, but we try to make sure that everyone is included.  Rarely do we have questions that have yes/no answers.  We tend to do a lot of character and behavior analysis or discussing social issues that affected a story.  When we read “Beneath a Scarlet Sky,” the conversation was heavily focused on the role of Catholicism and religion in the story and we could have continued talking for hours more about that book.  For the most part, our opinions about books and topics tend to be similar – there have only been a handful of books where the opinion was definitely split.  That also may be the nature of our group – we all fall within the same socioeconomic group and most of us share fairly similar social and political beliefs that are a minority in our town, which is part of the reason we are drawn together as a group. 

All in all, while our book club is largely social, it is made up of a group of bibliophiles who can talk books for hours on end and has led to some enlightening and lively discussions about books and related social topics, allowed me to expand my reading selections, and strengthened the friendships I have with these women in my life.