Book Club Believer
When it comes to book clubs, I suffer from something I’ve dubbed “Three Little Bears syndrome.”
Just as Goldilocks searched for a bed that was neither too hard nor too soft, I’m always searching for that perfect club that’s not too pedestrian or too pretentious. On one hand, I’m weary of book clubs where paperbacks with cupcakes on the cover are quickly flung aside in favor of gossip and wine-guzzling. On the other, I’m wary of groups so hyper-literary that their members are too busy trying to impress each other to get down with silly games such as “who would play count Alexander Rostov in the movie version of the book?”
This ‘just right’ pickiness has made me a serial book club dropout, a person who ghosts groups to seek greener pastures at the mere mention of Jodi Picoult or the first hint of intellectual one-upmanship. But it wasn’t always this way. Once, when I lived in Toronto, I was the member of a great book club. The Literary Rogues took books (but not themselves) seriously, and the club is one of the few things I miss about my life in that city (the others being my brother, affordable all-you-can-eat-sushi, and Misfit Studio). More than three years after moving to New York, I still surreptitiously read along with many of the group’s monthly picks, and when I decided to start my own book club recently, I looked back to my time with the Rogues to inform how I designed it.
Six months later, the Vicarious Reading Book Club has been rewarding and challenging in ways I never imagined. Though it has 50 members with another hundred or so on a waiting list, the group has quickly narrowed to a half-dozen or so regulars – a couple of native New Yorkers, a Korean immigrant, a fellow Canadian, and a Philadelphian who is as knowledgeable about cheesesteak as you might expect. In a world where I spend so much of my time with the same sort of (advertising) folks, it’s been nice to befriend people who love books as intensely as I do but otherwise live very different lives than I lead. And, just as the Literary Rogues is driven not by one passionate member but by several, I’ve made two of those regulars into co-managers of the club. That’s lesson #1 I learned from the Rogues – it can’t all rest on one person’s shoulders.
Many of the other lessons I’ve brought with me are intuitive but no less important. For instance, haranguing everyone to finish the book doesn’t matter – you can have a good discussion even if it’s just about how you couldn’t bear to stomach another sentence of something. Online surveys, meanwhile, are a godsend for book selection. Another cardinal rule is to come prepared. Getting ready for a book club is like studying for a test or working out – though I dread the thankless and tedious task of writing discussion questions, I’m always glad to have done it. Those couple of hours of prep have pre-empted a million awkward silences and prevented dozens of book club conversations from dwindling at the 45-minute mark.
Finally, setting is crucial. My book club’s first meeting was at a by-the-hour rental space I found on Breather. It was chic and centrally located, but it was also sterile and woefully short on the wine glasses necessary to smooth first-meetup jitters. And while meeting in peoples’ homes is ideal – cozy, personal, and thrillingly voyeuristic – it’s admittedly a bit impractical in a city like New York where homes are postage-stamp-sized rather than palatial. So for the most part we’ve found ourselves as regulars at The Immigrant, an East Village wine bar with low-lighting, cheap snacks, and a reservable booth that feels like it was made for book discussions.
For those of you considering starting your own book clubs, I’ll say this much – all the work is worth it. In a city full of social opportunities that I don’t take advantage of, the Vicarious Reading Book Club is one of the few things that’s drawn me out. As an introvert in an industry where I have to be professionally extroverted, I have a strong impulse to retreat into myself during my leisure time. So every month, choosing to lead an event – even a book-related one – feels like a foolish endeavor when I could instead be spending my time holed up at home or roaming the city solo. And yet at the end of each meeting, I feel more alive, energized, and connected to the world. I’m not much for self-improvement lately – I’m deep in a ‘binge watch TV on the couch always’ phase of life – but I do have conviction that this club is worth the effort. I’m better for being a part of it. I’m happier for being a part of it. And, above all else, I have a surplus of opinions about what actors should play which characters in the movie version of the book for being a part of it.*
*The answer is always Cate Blanchett or Timothée Chalamet.