Book Clubs To The Rescue
Why you should start one
We are all in the habit of going to the cinema in groups, and then grabbing drinks, or if you’re Alabama from “True Romance”, pie, but somehow, we don’t have the same habit with novels. We read books on our own, check out reviews, rate them on Goodreads, or tell our friends about them, but usually we don't get to discuss the book experiences any further.
As a writer who has lived in a few countries and many cities, I am always look for better, more entertaining ways to make new friends. Aside from my fiendish master plan to separate as many people from their cell phones as I can, I love to discuss the books I read, the same way I do with films.
When 2019 came along, bringing with it the black swan event called Covid-19, we found ourselves in lockdown! We all needed things to do, and extra ways to feel connected to our friends and communities. We also read more. Book sales took off, as did the number of online groups dedicated to discussing books. Online book clubs and home-delivered books made us all just a little happier, a little smarter, and this trend only grew once the quarantines ended.
I’m going to say something a little idealistic, a little improbable: sharing ideas and opinions about books should be as normal as watching football or Mr. Beast on YouTube (233 million subscribers! There is no emoji to express how I feel about this.)—although, speaking of YouTube, below is a video overview of some book clubs that are currently broadcasting on ‘Booktube’, another purveyor of popular lit programs with their own followings.
If you want to join a classic literature club, you can subscribe to the Patreon “Hardcore Literature Book Club”, which hosts live talks.
Instagram has its share of book club accounts as well. Between Two Books is Florence Welch’s book club, which has been in existence since 2012, and has a nice website. Nice, pretty, beautiful, whatever.
Let’s just say business is booming, so there’s a lot to choose from.
Aside from Oprah’s book club, which has had a very long run indeed (since 1996), there are more recently clubs created by Kaia Gerber or Emma Roberts, to name a few famous ones. I am glad of these celebrities’ contributions, and it might seem like the book club phenomenon is going to be more popular than MMA, but I assure you that’s not a sure bet. I think more writers should join or host their own. There should be a book club on Netflix! Every neighborhood should have its book club(s).
Down sides? The conversations aren’t stimulating enough? Find another one. Start your own.
Having hosted one myself for eight years at the public library in Barcelona, I can tell you that this is a very gratifying experience. It’s a chance to prolong the enjoyment of a book, delve deeper into it, and hearing points of view that you might not have considered. I belong to several book clubs in fact, the one I run, another to maintain my French, and a third in English online. At a certain point, the regular practice of moderating a book club turned into a pillar of my writer’s life: writing, reading, discussing books. I can’t imagine not doing this now.
It has also changed the way I think about books. I suggest books at the library, but the eventual choice comes from all members through voting, and we can only choose titles available in sufficient quantities. It means that I sometimes have to read books that don’t grab me, things I would have never chosen to read on my own. There was a time when this annoyed me. I thought, arg, what a waste of time. But over the years, I realize two things. 1) You learn a lot from that frustration. You figure out why you don’t like it or where the author might have gone wrong if that’s the problem. This is often great for seeing why something in your own writing isn’t working. 2) The other thing is, all books offer something of value. You may think the premise or the writing is flawed, but for everything objectionable about it, you still find things that are good.
Finally, and very obviously, book clubs support the industry. More sales for the author, more titles stay in print, more turnover available to fund more publications. Books connecting with readers, and those golden four or five hours when you did not look at your phone. Whelp! That’s a health benefit as well as a contribution to a better society.
To use an analogy, starting your own book club is a bit like planting flowers for the bees.
It's not something I've actively sought out, but I've always liked the sound of a good book club. The closest I have is a friend with very similar reading taste and we often exchange books or recommend them to each other, plus one of my PhD students is an avid reader and half of our meetings are often going off on tangets about what we're reading and why we do or don't like it.
Substack has been great for expanding my knowledge and thoughts about various books, too. It's also fantastic to see YouTube etc having such popularity for books. It gives me hope that the world isn't dead to endless social media scrolling in favour of sitting down and focussing on something.