In the Bosom of a Book Group

In mid-nineties Washington, D.C., I was a founding member of that exotic creature, the co-ed book group. We read about the Ebola virus and war novels that don’t feature a romance—All Quiet on the Western Front, The Killer Angels—as well as the usual distaff fare. Upon moving to Lexington, I was lucky to be immediately welcomed (thank you, Laura!) into the bosom of a book group, women only, where I have abided happily since 2002. From both experiences I’ve learned that selection methodology is essential for a good alchemy of books and people.

You don’t want to pick books solely by popular vote, which can lead to tyrannies of majorities, or by taking turns choosing a title all by yourself, which can lead to anarchy and decline, as when someone picks a book no one wants to read, and no one reads it, and no one even attends. Rather, a sort of electoral college is best.

In my current group, every month one member has her turn to “present.” She pitches three titles for a future meeting, and members vote with secret ballots. No raising hands or feelings will be hurt, and no messing around with the magic number three—two is a paucity of choice, and four splits the vote too many ways. Thus each member is empowered with some degree of choice for every book assigned.

Avoid ruts by spanning genres and eras in each month’s triad. Pick titles under 400 pages for best read-through results, but when a 500-page-plus work demands to be chosen, consider allowing two months for it, as we did for Middlemarch, Anna Karennina, Team of Rivals, and now Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. A good-sized group is 10–12: if half show up at each meeting, everyone gets enough of a turn to talk. I recommend a single litmus test for prospective members: did you like Olive Kitteridge?

Many good books have been made into films, but beware bogging down the discussion with two much chatter about the movie. Encourage members to support their observations by reading passages aloud. Small talk is half the fun, but make sure you spend at least thirty minutes of focused discussion on the book itself. An extreme example is the hardest working book group I know, my mother’s in Florida, which includes several retired educators, who take turns serving as discussion leaders, for which they prepare detailed lesson plans.

I have persuaded my group to set aside December for poetry. Instead of having to read a whole book during the holidays, each of us picks one poem, brings photocopies, and reads it aloud during the meeting. Last year we did all Keats inspired by the movie Bright Star—a stretch for all of us, honestly, but we ended up having a great discussion. Yet there is always resistance to the poetry theme from somewhere in our ever shifting membership, along the lines of “But I don’t read poetry!” Why are so many book lovers not reading poetry? (The Women Writers Conference can help you with that.)

A co-ed book group in Lexington recently did me the honor of inviting me to their meeting on a novel I had edited, Hannah Coulter. It was a wonderful discussion, enlivened by sound disagreement and many comparisons of the author’s poetry vs. fiction. I doubt the salons of Weimar Germany produced more amplitude of insight than was spoken that night.