About That Book Club

I've now belonged to two -- no, actually three -- book clubs, though one of them never met. Some might say, why join a book club when you can read whatever you want when you want. Here's what these groups have meant to me -- how they've helped my reading and me.

In late 2001, I organized a book club at the condominiums where I lived in Northfield outside Chicago. For our first selection, we read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the same book that was being promoted at the time for all Chicagoans to read. Over the coming months, I came to know other authors thanks to that small but wonderful group of women. I met Barbara Kingsolver's literature for the first time when we read her first book, The Bean Trees, a novel. I loved it and soon became a Kingsolver fan, though I'm drawn more to her creative non-fiction than to her fiction. My favorite is Animal Vegetable Miracle, but I also particularly enjoy her essay collections. I am now looking forward to her latest novel, Climate Change, a book that reflects this biology major's interest in science as well as her creative talents.

In the late 1990s or early 2000s, a few of the women at The Associated Press in Chicago where I then worked decided to form our own book club. Someone -- I'm not sure who made the decision. -- decreed that we would read Toni Morrison's novel, Paradise. I had loved her book, Song of Solomon, and, as I read it, remembered that my mother had said a copy of it was lying on my aunt Vonda Lee's bedside when she died. But I struggled through Paradise, often confused by the enormous cast of characters and intricate plot. Somewhere along the line, a friend said she had read the book and it would be a good idea to keep a genealogical tree while reading it. How right she was! Morrison is a great writer, but her books are not always easy reads.

I finally finished Paradise only to figure out eventually that our book club for whatever reason -- probably the AP's erratic and varied work schedules -- would never meet. I remember that, upon completion, I felt I had read a truly good story but that I was unclear about some basic facts.  I've since read, or rather listened to, Morrison's shorter and less complex The Bluest Eye, and enjoyed it. And now, a decade or more later, I want to re-read Paradise, but this time I'll keep a family tree at hand. I'll read from an old-fashioned hard copy so that I can take notes in the margins. Some books are made to be read once; others need to be read repeatedly to be fully appreciated. Paradise is such a book, at least for me.

In August 2003, I moved to Conway, Arkansas, where I had family but few friends. A couple of years later, I joined a book club at the suggestion of  a colleague at the newspaper where I work. And, yes, I've made some wonderful friends. I've also read and enjoyed books that I never would have read otherwise. Among them are In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (another one that probably should be read more than once for full effect) and The Cat's Table by MIchael Ondaatje. When I've not liked a book, I've quit reading it. In a few cases, I never even began a club selection -- a decision that provokes no rebuke from our book club. Obviously, the discussions are more meaningful, though, if you've read the book.

I am not an official, or even unofficial, Oprah Book Club member, though I enjoy perusing her website's reading suggestions. And  I count Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, an Oprah selection several years ago, as among my favorite books. Likewise, I check Nina Sankovitch's popular blog, readallday.org, occasionally for reading suggestions and was an early buyer of her book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, the story of her year of reading and critiquing a book a day.

No, a book club isn't for everyone. But for me, it's a connection, not only to other people, but to good reading suggestions and book discussions. And when there are so many great books to be read, it helps me know which one to pick up next.