A Book Club

Book clubs became a "thing" when Oprah was in her prime, in roughly 1996. According to Wikipedia, "Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month. In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years."

Getting behind reading, and suggesting titles for her fans to investigate, and even the idea of jumping on the Book Club fad, Oprah can take a certain amount of credit for some unexpected best sellers, and bringing some new names to the Big Kids' table of authors.

About that same time, an older woman I knew was also part of her local ladies' book club. In this club, members were tasked with reading the selected book, and then, on a rotating basis, write a review of the featured book, delving into its writer, themes, style, or whatever other things about it caught the reviewer's attention. That had been, for many years, more the norm for a typical book club. The members shared favorite books and authors, and their study of the books was two parts social occasion and one part scholarship.

More recently, and thanks at least in part, no doubt, to Oprah's backing, writers themselves have jumped on the "book club" trend, and offered readers book club specials and suggested questions and themes to explore when they review the book in question. Turn to the end of a popular book, and you'll often find such an addendum. 

While there are specialized book clubs that undertake the classics, a particular genre, and even non-fiction, most clubs will suggest popular recent fiction, and the titles will be chosen from lists provided by all members, trying to touch upon writers from different background, a wide assortment of main characters and diverse themes.

There are two good reasons and two big benefits to starting or joining a book club: you'll be introduced to writers you've never sampled, and you'll actually read a book with some care and thought of analyzing it. 

Those two benefits, of course, imply one small negative I've realized as a result of much of the reading I do being for the specific purpose of analysis: sometimes you just want to ride along with the flow of a good story and not be thinking too hard to the style, character arcs, tics and tricks of the writer, or my favorite - complaining about first-person-present-tense!

Book clubs have been started by groups of friends, through churches and civic organizations, book stores and social clubs. Some are highly organized, and have a mapped-out schedule of books with assigned reviewers and a set series of questions for each member to ponder. Others are ad hoc, spending as much time at each gathering deciding what to read next as actually discussing the book just read. 

In addition to the benefits cited above, another great reason to join a book club - especially if you truly enjoy reading - is to add insights to your personal experience of reading a story, finding an author, exploring a genre. It can be truly enlightening to hear what another person experienced in their exploration of a new book, and a way of developing your own critical thinking.

A great idea for your book club, or any book club, is to find, read, and bring to your meeting, local authors. There are more than you might think when first getting started, and it's both a great way to talk about your recent read directly with the author, and support the people taking all their time and skill to provide us, the grateful readers, with our material for thought!