Don’t Read this Alone.
Why book clubs matter and why you need to start one as a reader or writer.
by Hunter Liguore
One of my first book clubs began in 2007 with the book, Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It was the first title we read together and it was almost also the last!
I sold the book club—which consisted of coworkers and friends—solely on the first line:
“When all was said and done, killing my mother came easily.”
I still get chills reading that first sentence. It holds so much possibility and propels me to go on without further prodding. To my mind, it was the perfect book to discuss with others.
The book was Sebold’s follow up to The Lovely Bones, which became the equivalent to an overplayed song on the radio, since it was everywhere for years, a dazzlingly-thrilling example of what books could do to change lives and create communities of readers discussing them.
When Almost Moon was announced, I wanted to read it with everyone I knew! It was a very small book, one that no one would balk at taking on, and like I said, the first line was stellar. I sent out announcements, planned refreshments, crafted talking points, and set the official date to discuss the book in person. Everyone was excited… and thus, my first book club had begun!
Things didn’t go quite as planned.
For starters, my reading group didn’t really like the book. It was a huge surprise! Once they fell out of love, they no longer wanted to participate in the meet-up or talk about it. I tried to explain that the joy of reading together was to exchange ideas of what we liked or didn’t like. Other things that I didn’t prepare for, when we did meet: refreshments made people sleepy or incited frequent trips to pee, often interrupting conversations. Sometimes one person’s opinion swayed everyone else’s. Time was an issue also. In the end, though I’d planned meticulously, the whole experience became the Almost Book Club…
A week after the failure, I sent out a memo with the next book to read together. This time I went with Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. I sold them on reading and discussing the book, with an excursion to see the movie together. Most liked the idea of it. I did the same promo and thought for sure everything would go as planned… but again, no one liked the book! And again, I tried to win them over to at least attend the book club gathering to share their ideas, good or bad. It met with mixed results, but I didn’t give up!
Book three, I let someone else pick it. In the end, I didn’t like the book—but I was eager to show up and explain why.
From there, I had to regroup.
What changed, and what ultimately made the book club successful, was when I addressed that we don’t all have to like a book. In many ways, I’d made those first three meet-ups like a schoolroom with homework and questions. (This was before I became a college professor, or even had the aspiration to teach, so make me smile in hindsight!) In reality, no one wanted to be the ‘bad guy’ and say they didn’t like the book… least of all, they didn’t want to figure out what the author was trying to say in any given passage… they just wanted to talk about the way the book made them feel. Good or bad.
I went on to create an official book club called, The Tea and Pee Book Club. I got less serious about what we read and how we engaged each other, with ease—less classroom, more easy discussion. We started big—War and Peace big! And from there, we went around the world in books a hundred times since.
This summer, we’re reading The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna. The premise: “a lonely young woman gets too close to her charismatic female student in a propulsive debut culminating in a dangerously debauched Midsummer's Eve (author’s website).” We gather online, sip tea, pee when we need to, and explore the way the book resonates in our lives. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone shares. Our ideas get challenged. We listen. We learn. We grow. We allow ourselves to be open to consider other lives, other vistas, other opinions that are different than our own.
As writers, book clubs are our lifeblood. They give us the opportunity to engage readers, to be part of their world, while witnessing how they might be experiencing and responding to our words, our vision, our ideas. We can learn what excited them, or what they had a hard time believing, or when we made them cry or laugh, or mad, or questioning, or maybe they learned something new. I find when a reader contacts me, they often see my work in a way I just didn’t know was possible—they will make connections I didn’t know I’d made. They are essentially tiny magnifying glasses to show me all the extra treasures.
I asked Diane Zinna, author of The All-Night Sun, why book clubs are important to authors. She said;
“I released my novel during the pandemic summer of 2020, and with so many bookstores closed, it felt like no one was going to find it. It’s always true that too many aspects of a life in publishing are reduced to stars, pull-quotes, and BookScan numbers. But visiting book clubs reminded me that my book might mean something unique to a reader, that someone might be mulling over lingering questions, that the story is still alive.”
She’s so right! For writers, especially during the global pandemic (2020) book clubs offer us a place to pasture with our readers. It allows us to keep the work real, to hear from the people engaging it, and to share what it meant to them. I like to think book clubs open my door to the global community, something that’s been so important during lockdown.
Similarly to my previous post on writing letters to authors, I’d challenge you to start a book club, even if it’s just with one other person. Use some of my trouble-shooting above to keep it fun and friendly, and then reach out to the author and see if they are available to pop in for a session, through Zoom. Many authors have reading guides or questions--or better still, will field your book club questions.
In the end, when you start a book club, you’re creating a mini-community, like a spaceship or hot air balloon, that can take you around the world!
Meet this week’s Author: Hunter Liguore
is a professor of writing in New England. She’s published widely on the craft of writing. Her work has appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Short Édition, and more. Her essay chapbook, ‘Learning to Have a Heart,’ is now available.
& Instagram @happylondonpress
Are you in need of a weekly fiction fix
Subscribe and get it sent straight into your in box
* indicates required
Email Format
No comments:
Post a Comment