Joining a Book Club Kind of Changed My Life
This month marks the anniversary of joining my book club, which has proved to be one of my best decisions to date. When my friend Sheena asked me to join her small book club three years ago, I was excited but nervous. I loved the idea of reading and talking about books with other ardent readers (colleagues who worked at a bookstore with us), but as a grad student who already had too much to read I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish books on time. I decided to give it a try anyway, and it’s actually been kind of life-changing.
One of my favorite parts of book club is reading books I would never pick up off a shelf. Every month a different member suggests four books and then we each state our first and second choice, and the book with the most votes becomes our next pick. Between the six of us we have a pretty broad range of tastes in fiction and non-fiction, and usually one of us isn’t that excited about the pick. On more than one occasion we’ve chosen a book I really hated. I trudged through the painfully bad writing in Joe Hill’s story collection Strange Weather, and I pushed through boredom and flat characters in a couple of recent fantasy novels while holding on to the belief that I don’t just outright dislike fantasy. But I’ve also discovered some of my favorite books from book club like Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Stories and David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks.I’ve also read science fiction and a vampire novel for the first time. I learned that I actually like (literary) horror when I was too afraid to read it before. I surprised myself by reading 600 pages of historical non-fiction — for fun. Thanks to my book club, I now read more widely than ever before and although I don’t always enjoy our reads, I love trying new authors and genres.
My book club has also given me insight into the books we’ve read that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. We usually differ in our opinions and sometimes interpretations of books, and I find it a real pleasure to try seeing a story through different eyes. Sometimes someone is more critical where I became absorbed in plot, or someone expresses pure emotion over a plot point where I was more critical, or someone explains some nuanced historical aspect that I missed, or someone shares an interpretation that changes my view of the entire book. Reading books from multiple perspectives deepens the reading experience for me and makes me think about the books for longer than I might otherwise, which helps me remember them better too.
Joining a book club also saved my love for reading. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember, loving the escape into another place and time and the opportunity to learn pieces of history, points of geography, and new words. My passion for literature influenced my decision to study English in college and to continue that study by pursuing advanced degrees. But in grad school, reading became work that I was constantly doing for classes, for teaching, and for my own research. Some of that reading included novels, but it also included dense theoretical arguments and dry academic articles. At the end of the day, reading was the last thing I wanted to do. But reading for book club gave me the opportunity to read something completely different and to read without the pressure of having to write critically about it. I was just reading for fun like I did before grad school and it was immensely enjoyable. It also felt so easy compared to some of the things I’d been reading.
With reading becoming fun again, I wanted to spend more and more time in books. So I set aside time specifically for reading my book club pick and it helped me develop the habit of reading regularly for an hour or so at night and sometimes in luxurious binges on Fridays or Saturdays before our meeting. Soon I felt like I had more time — and I definitely had more energy — to read, so I started reading other books for fun in between our picks. My first year being in book club was the first time I not only met my Goodreads reading goal, but surpassed it with a total of 22 books. I more than doubled that number the following year, reading 50 books from cover to cover — a goal I’ve aspired to for a long time.
Joining my book club has significantly improved my reading experience by making it broader, more meaningful, and more enjoyable. My initial reservation about keeping up with the reading proved to be unwarranted because I love our discussions and I look forward to actively participating in them, even (and maybe especially?) if I don’t like the book. But the best part of joining my book club has been the friendships I’ve developed. We are a hodgepodge group with various ages, backgrounds, and identities, but our mutual love of books has knitted us together pretty tightly and we have shared in each other’s highs and lows. Through the pandemic and my relocation to a new place, these friends have kept me feeling connected to a community as we moved our meetings to Zoom. I just can’t imagine not having these women and our conversations in my life.
When I first joined this book club, I never expected it would enrich my life in so many ways; but it has and continues to make my life better. If you’ve ever thought about joining or starting a book club, you should give it a try. Reading books with other people can be a pretty special thing.