Book Club experience

I attended my own branch’s well established book club. It meets monthly in the branch’s only meeting room on the fourth Tuesday of the month at 4pm and is comprised of all white retirees. I don’t usually attend (reading is a challenge for me) but I provide the group with 3-4 titles each month from which to choose for the following month’s discussion. Usually but not always there is one nonfiction book included among the choices. The club’s leader is the branch’s assistant manager, who in addition to reading the selection looks for information about the book or author to share with the group.

This month’s selection was Lisa See’s historical novel Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. The assistant manager shared a photo of “the marriage bed” referred to in the novel. The photo is of the marriage bed inherited by the author who, like the characters in her book, is of Chinese descent. After that, the only question she needed to ask was, “well, what did you think?” and the discussion took off.  The only man in the club chose not to finish the book (he prefers nonfiction and occasionally literary fiction). He and I were still welcomed into the discussion.

No one dominated the discussion, and no questions or discussion prompts were needed. The group reflected on the ending, wondered why a character behaved differently than expected, agreed that Asian cultures prefer conforming over standing out compared to Westerners. They remarked on sexism in the book, the difference between doctors’ and midwives’ expectations and exposure to patients, and the use of concubines to assure that male heirs were born. The assistant manager shared that she’d read a review of the book that alluded to the friendship between two women as a “thinly veiled” relationship. No one in the group saw it as anything more than a friendship. Everyone participated, including me. Near the end of the hour, I shared three novels and a nonfiction book with the group to choose from. They elected to read Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake for next month (because it was set in Michigan) and also Ben Raines’ The Last Slave Ship (because it was true) for the following month.

The public library system I work for has been talking a lot about combating loneliness being an important role the library can play in the community.  At the end of the club meeting, one of the more elderly participants shared that she is going through an emotional time preparing to move out of her house of 30 years.  The group offered words of encouragement and asked her questions about what she was looking for in a new home and assured her that book club members were friends, too. The man in the book club has told me more than once that the library is his “sanctuary.”  

My library system is also working to centralize all programming and recently defined clubs as patron-led groups that require no staff time.  Another book club run by the Main branch is also led by staff, who told me they are meeting with the Programming department to make an argument for staff-led book clubs, even if other clubs may be run without staff support (e.g. Euchre clubs). I know that my branch’s club has tried taking turns choosing the book and leading the discussion, but found they much prefer that staff take on those roles, if for no other reason than to avoid hurt feelings if someone doesn’t like that month’s book selection.