I start my Mondays with news, and today I found this interesting article from WSJ called No, I Don’t Want to Join Your Book Club by Betsy McKay. The article requires you to register unless you have a subscription. It’s a good read, but if you don’t want to go through the trouble of registering, I’ll summarize it below.
According to the article, traditional book clubs, “the kind where you have to read a book you didn’t pick, finish by a deadline and come to the meeting with something clever to say,” are not for everyone. Although book clubs have been “a staple of social life” for years, a lot of people have complaints. The book clubs might not cater or reflect their tastes and these readers shy from offering recommendation for the fear that the rest of the club won’t like their preferred reads. Reading assigned books feels too much like work. There is pressure to come up with “smart-sounding hot takes” about the books they’ve read and don’t like to be put on the spot.
Whatever reason, some people look for alternative to the traditional book club structure. Some become members of silent book clubs, gathering at local libraries, restaurants, breweries, or other fun places to quietly read in peace with other book-loving people. Some do away with assigned book lists and instead meet once a week over dinner to discuss the individual books they’ve read without the “classroom-vibe” ruining the mood. The people mentioned in the article really embrace this new format. There are many pictures of happy people reading together.
Moving on from the article to a more personal take, at the core, reading seems like a quintessentially private form of entertainment. It’s just you and the page. So why are people so eager to connect a talk about what they’ve read? Why is this a social pastime?
There are probably many reasons, but from a writer’s point of view, the need to discuss books makes perfect sense. Books are a form of communication. We write them to connect with other readers. We have things we want to say, and so we say them through the narrative. And then that communication filters through the reader, becomes altered and enriched by their thoughts, aided by their own life experiences, and it is passed on, to other readers.
As a writer, it’s fun to see this happen. Your message, your creation, living on. You can see it resonate or fail to resonate. Readers tend to view characters as role models. Writers, though, strive to mirror life by creating flawed characters, messy and imperfect. It is those imperfections and the inherent messiness that make for the best discussions, because in a way it contributes to the net of social ties that both bind and support us.
Whether we like it or not, we have some leftover emotions and survival mechanisms that evolved to keep us alive in more dangerous times. Fear is one of those. Young kids like to be scared. It must’ve been a part of some survival strategy. If a scary predator comes near and you are weak and small, your best bet is to hide and be very still. Sabretooth tigers no longer stalk our toddlers, but the need to experience that fear lingers. There is a reason why Goosebumps is a cultural phenomenon.
Hate. Another powerful emotion that most of us try to avoid. It’s a harmful state of being, both to the one who hates and to the one who is hated. We’re discouraged from hating and engaging in violence hate creates, and so we try to suppress the urge to hate. But the mechanism that activates it is still in place. A teacher once told me that the scariest thing in the world are good people who are given permission to hate. When emotion that is suppressed erupts, especially collectively, it causes irreparable damage.
On the flip side of the coin, in our ordinary lives, we are rarely thrilled about something. We don’t usually reach a state of being elated and or even that excited. We don’t often feel overwhelming relief. We don’t always get an opportunity to cheer in sympathy.
Books allow us to experience all of those extremes. We can celebrate a protagonist’s win, we can hate the antagonist as much as we like, and we can pass judgement on every character without any kind of social backlash. We can cry, we can yell, we can vent all we want.
And then we reach out and look for validation of our feelings. “Oh I really hated so and so. Did you hate him too? Yes? And I was so happy when so and so finally won. Were you? Oh good. I found my people.” There is acceptance and reassurance there. A safe sense of belonging, in a way.
What are your thoughts on book clubs? Are you a solitary reader or a social one?
I tried a book club once and have been invited to join others, but they usually pick literary or mainstream fiction which I often find boring. None supported genre fiction or specifically urban fantasy, paranormal romance, any romance really or anything sexy or spicy. So, I’m mostly a lone reader except for a few friends who have read the same books, and when we see each other, then I really enjoy chatting about them.
assigned reading is a torture i wont put myself through. i survived school and all its horrible titles. i don’t ever have to do that again. i’ve occasionally looked into book clubs, but they’re all like bestseller vanilla contemporary fiction. i like fantasy and scifi. the real world sucks, and i don’t want to read about it! i want to read about another world entirely, escapism. i’ve never found a local book club for fantasy/scifi. and didnt know that online book clubs existed before this post. but even within scifi/fantasy, i’m still picky about what i read. and i have a to-read booklist that is miles long… special thanks to the BDH for all their recommendations! and i enjoy the BDH discussing ilona andrews books. i love reading all their speculations and theories. and i love how much other people enjoyed exactly what i enjoyed. i’ve taken a lot of crap over the years for my taste in books. but here i feel like i belong.
I’m in an online book club where members vote on one of 3 options for the book of the month and discuss in a private chat as they read. I find that an online format is a better fit for an introvert like me. It’s not too restrictive because people can post at their own time, even after the month for the assigned book is passed.
I tend to be a solitary reader. I have tried book clubs in the past but find that some lingering bit of my English Lit/History Major brain kicks in, and I end up reading to analyze. The result is that I don’t just sink into the story, and I then enter a social experience in an incompatible analysis mode. Most focus on the “I feel” while I’m focused on the writer’s craft, etc. It ends up frustrating all around. So I don’t do book clubs. I also don’t want to ruin others’ experience of a book, which can happen when the veil is pulled back.
I think of myself as a solitary reader, but this blog and comments have made me reflect.
I have just devoured the latest murderbot in secret and on kindle – because my husband and I both love the series, he hasn’t realised it’s been released, and I’ve ordered him a dead tree version for his birthday next week.
It’s been so hard not to discuss it and enjoy the fun bits together! This is one of the reasons I love the BDH – it’s the enjoyment of discussing books we’ve chosen to read, and love (in addition to the shipping, speculation, TLC etc.)
My day job centres around reading, and while I choose my research areas / fascinating rabbit holes, there’s also a lot of non-self-selected reading required. So I shy from having anyone else determining my R&R reading, particularly if there’s an expectation to analyse it / come up with clever insights.
For almost my entire 20’s my local B&N had a grouping of benches and chairs near the Sci/Fy section. Thursday night there would be a mix of people who just ‘happened’ to be there willing to talk about our current reads. Best book club ever!
Both social and solitary, actually. When I was a child, we didn’t have television. We had a big fireplace in a drafty living room. When I was very young, my mother read aloud to me. When I could read on my own, we all huddled in front of the fire, sharing the warmth, but each immersed in our own book. My children all love books, but not necessarily the same kinds of books. Down the years, we’ve shared books, traded books, discussed books, and even turned noses up at some books — not necessarily the same ones. Even so, I need a book to go to sleep at night — even if it keeps me up long past bedtime.
I used to be in a Mormon book club. Most of the book selections were MG/YA or meant to build character.
When it was my turn to pick the book, I picked–with the best of intentions–Nancy Kress’s Beggars in Spain. I had been deeply inspired by its message of humans needing each other, even those who are considered superior beings. What I had forgotten was how many sex scenes, f-words, and pages the book has.
Those nice Mormon ladies bought the book and read it and showed up ready to discuss. I will never forget that. They could have refused, and many would have, but instead the book club ladies came through and discussed material that many would not have ever chosen to read.
That was the high point of book clubbing. The rest has taught me to avoid in-person book clubs–but maybe I inadvertently taught other people to avoid book clubbing, too. Ha ha ha.
This makes me chuckle-I am in a book club with people I love, whose taste in reads I hate. So I have slogged through 2 years of angst-y millenial love(?) stories and a few gems, because I love seeing these women every month. Then I come home and devour urban fantasy, like any decent member of the BDH should. 😉
I have not liked book clubs I have tried in the past. I did feel judged and I didn’t like much of what they wanted to read. However I joined a bookclub when I moved a couple years ago and it has been wonderful. We have yummy food. There is no shaming if you don’t read the book and our discussions are always so interesting. You are able to contribute to the conversation even if you haven’t read the book. Sometimes I read the book and sometimes I don’t. I agree with the previous comment about loving the people and not particularly liking their taste in books.
I used to be hurt that I was never asked to be in a book club. People would make it sound like a lot of fun. I had a feeling that I wasn’t asked because I was an English major and a copy editor. Thank you for freeing me from that feeling!
I like the idea of a silent book club. Maybe with just one member? I’m not sure I’d want to discuss how I felt about Rogan’s tactile abilities, for instance. Cue the fans and cold showers.
My friends and I started a new book club – only fiction, only happy endings. Other members choose more bittersweet or nebulous endings, but that’s been part of the fun, the learning what people love in their books.
I joined a mystery book club through my work place (a public library) to force me to expand my reading in a genre I knew I liked. I had also survived cancer the previous year, so it was the kick to get my introverted butt out there to do something I would enjoy but wasn’t likely to do. Since everyone in the book club is a member of the public and and not a pre-existing friend group, we are definitely more book-focused and have a wider range of ages and perspectives on what we read. We all see to have a similar meter for measuring quality, though, so that’s nice. I have since become the facilitator, so I compile a list of books with summaries for people to look through and we vote on the titles we are most interested in reading. I also just take suggestions for our reading list as well. Members are always giving each other reading recommendations, so it’s a good resource for all of us. Anyway, I think genre-based book clubs are a good idea because there is always going to be something for everyone if they like that genre. And it sets a certain expectation that you can generally meet.
i’m an Ilona andrews’s reader!
i love your Books and i have read almost all of them (those i could find, in France it’s not easy) many many times…
thank you soooooo much for tour wonderfull gift to the World of imagination
please never doubt yourself, but continue to strive for greatness, because i soooo love the résultats!!!!!
Late to the party, but that is my way I guess.
I’m in a Bookclub organised by my local library. They supply the books, we take turn supplying the snacks and wine.
I like that it’s a bunch of people I don’t know outside of the club, because I don’t mind sharing my honest opinion. We have a range of people (there’s 10 of us) and that means we get contrasting views. People aren’t afraid to say they hated a book everyone else liked, and we happily discuss why they feel that way.
If a book is a DNF for me, then I’m upfront as to why.
It’s great because I read things I wouldn’t usually have touched. And I meet some great people I would ever usually get an opportunity to meet. It also flexes my confidence and social skills in a safe environment.
So yeah, I get why some people don’t like them. And I sometimes don’t like the feeling of “having” to read something I may not enjoy when I have a really good book lined up, but I also like that accountability.