Book Club

"So, I guess I'm out of the book club?" - Ben, LOST, "A Tale of Two Cities"

On LOST (one my favorite TV shows) the mysterious "Others" had a book club, and it was no different than any other book club held by people who are not the descendants of a secretive hippie scientific initiative and a crew of random true believers recruited by a megalomanic engaged in exploiting a supernatural island and terrorizing plane crash survivors. According to Lostpedia,

The "book club" is an informal group of Others who get together periodically to discuss a book that was selected by the meeting's host.

§  Members included: Juliet, Amelia, Adam, and four Others background cast, three of  whom appeared in later episodes.
§  Ben didn't attend at least one meeting hosted by Juliet.

Members of the "Others" on LOST have a book club

Click on the video to see how tense a discussion of Stephen King's Carrie can get!

Though I have participated in many, many, many book discussions in my day as professional student for life, I have never participated in a formal “book club”. For this assignment, I conducted an observation of a mystery book club at a midsized public library in central Indiana. Disclosure: I’m a former employee, so some of the overheard conversations are tricky to report on without being “indiscrete”, so aliases will be used. The library offers two adult book clubs, the above mentioned mystery book club and an adult fiction book club. The meeting was held in the "Indiana Room", a pleasant room, which has a large glass topped meeting table that seats 8 to 10, and two smaller tables (each with four chairs) and is separated from the rest of the library by a glass wall with two glass doors, which were kept open for the meeting. The participants included six regulars, a guest, and myself. The regular participants were all female senior adult patrons. (The guest was the granddaughter of one participants, an adult IUPUI undergraduate student majoring in history.) This month’s book title is The Butterfly and the Violin (2014) by Kristy Cambron.

The assignment called for stealth observation, but given the circumstances and judging the mood of the group as friendly and open with many familiar faces, I introduced myself and explained my reason for being there and was welcomed warmly. This proffer of information also allowed me to engage in open questioning about the dynamics and form of the group, how books are chosen and their opinions on that process. Also, since the library is currently experiencing a staff vacuum, the patrons openly also shared opinions about the previous staff group leaders. I did not participate in the book discussion until asked at the end if I was interested in reading that month’s book after hearing them roundly pan it as terrible. They also asked if I’d like to join and said they’d be happy to have me. Then, they asked me to apply for the job opening because they need a librarian! These ladies have a very good sense of humor about the situation. At that point, I asked a few more questions about the group which led to a discussion of the group’s history.

Structure: Meeting Format

As a newbie to book clubs, I came with a completely open mind, armed only with my past knowledge of a former colleague’s experiences as the book group facilitator several years ago. Because of the staffing issues, a member acted as the facilitator of the group. The meeting didn’t appear to have a formal or rigid structure, as described in “Structuring Your Meeting” on the ilovelibraries.org article, “Starting a Book Club”, but the group members have been meeting together for six years, so they know what they are doing! At the beginning, and at the end of the meeting, administrative matters were discussed briefly. At the beginning (1:00 P.M.) the facilitator passed out copies of the group’s next book selection to everyone at the table (including me). She then shared that she would be unable to lead the next month’s meeting. Everyone expressed the hope that a new librarian would be hired to lead the group by then. In the absence of that, another member volunteered to lead the group in the other member’s stead. The responsibilities of this position seemed to include bringing snacks and coming prepared to facilitate if necessary. The group then launched immediately into the book discussion. This often went into tangents as members related personal connections with the topics and setting of the novel, and other digressions to related issues and so on. At the end of the hour of allotted time, one or two members left, but the remaining participants continued to chat and socialize for about fifteen minutes, with some of the discussion returning to the book even though the meeting was officially over.

Discussion Dynamics

The group did not have a staff leader, so the patron who passed the books out acted as the facilitator or discussion leader. The patron who’d volunteered to help with the next month’s meeting, (a former teacher) also led the meeting. (I’ll refer to them as the facilitator and the teacher.) Both the facilitator and the teacher seemed to enjoy leading the discussion and the group seemed content enough with the arrangement. They (the group leaders) began by sharing their observations and also asking open ended questions of the group at large. They also asked individuals who had not yet expressed opinions for their takes, sometimes with open ended questions like, “What do you think about that?” and other times directly addressing the person with a specific question. The other four members participated fully, some more vocally than others, but everyone seemed happy and content with the group dynamic. Some were more passive, or quiet for longer periods than others. But everyone had a chance to speak and did. The facilitator and teacher both had strong personalities and opinions, but both were polite and courteous (if a little testy sometimes with each other). The facilitator and the teacher seemed totally self-aware that they tended to dominate the discussion somewhat. I sensed that two other members were confident in voicing their opinions and comments as well, but were less boisterous. The other two seemed more naturally quiet. If the “ground” wasn’t ceded by the speaker when someone tried to jump in, the less dominant participants didn’t hesitate to engage in cross talk if determined to speak. The group did not take turns or use any formal conversation starters/mediator tools like index cards, but facilitator and teacher both made a point to ask others for their general opinions and on specific issues that arose in the discussion.

The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron

Book Discussion: The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron was the month’s selection. When arranging to attend the group, the library assistant told me the book title, which I looked up in the Evergreen catalog to prepare. I am a quick reader, but no copies were immediately available on short notice. I was surprised to find that the title is cataloged as REL, for religion and not as a mystery. I glanced at Goodreads to get familiar with the story. Book #1 of the “Hidden Masterpiece” series the story contains two plots, one set in the past during the Holocaust about an Austrian violinist resister who was sent to a concentration camp for smuggling Jews to safety, and another in modern day America, about a New York art dealer struggling to recover from being jilted at the altar, who picks up the pieces and begins a search for a painting of the violinist that fascinated her as a girl. The theme appears to be finding beauty in “unlikely places.”

Group Consensus: They hated it! This book inspired strong emotional responses from the group who also made connections with modern day autocratic fascist movements and the growing problem of white supremacist violence around the world and in the United States. The facilitator and the teacher who had both visited Europe and concentration camps shared their experiences. Other members talked about the Holocaust Museum. Despite the moving subject, the writing was universally condemned as weak, poor, and more suitable for a YA book audience. The facilitator had actively sought out reviews but could find nothing in Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly. The group concluded that the rave reviews on Goodreads must be from avid fans of Christian fiction, given that the book was awarded a prize by a Christian fiction organization. The group also decried the absence of an essential ingredient to mysteries, a real mystery to solve! They all agreed that the recent book selection had been terrible and expressed hope that things would improve. They also expressed a desire for more topical variety and higher quality books!

Readers’ Advisory -Class Connections

ALA Archives poster collection, found on  Pinterest

The importance for any library professional to focus reading suggestions on the needs and wants of patrons was underscored by the group’s discussion of problems related to the book choices and selection process issues. A great contrast was drawn between my former colleague’s performance as a facilitator and group leader and her replacement’s efforts, with the latter found extremely wanting. We’ll call the former “Carrie” and the replacement “Nora.”

Carrie received high marks for her broad range of knowledge about fiction and the high-quality choices she offered the group. She provided a short description of the author, the author’s style, and the key features of the genre they specialized in. She also provided a short synopsis of the book (s). Because Carrie (in my experience) was well versed in the latest publishing trends and completely up to date on new releases and highly aware tastes of the entire community, particularly this group of ladies, her choices were almost always hits. The voting process took place at the end of the year Book Club Christmas book exchange lunch. Carrie also included some of the group member’s suggestions in the next year's final list.

In contrast, “Nora” appears to have imposed her own tastes and interests on the group; this was also the group’s conclusion. To a woman, they were not pleased with her book selections, her leadership style, or the lack of community support. Her overall performance of her duties was rated lackluster at best. The outspoken facilitator said, “Appalachia! Every month, Appalachia! I mean come on! I like it fine, but by the end I was ‘Appalachiaed’ out!” Another quieter member added, “And religion! I’m not against it at all, but every book had a Christian theme! I was getting tired of it every single month!” Nora facilitated both the mystery and adult fiction groups and these preferences were present in both groups’ book selections. Since group membership overlapped, this exacerbated the issue of too much emphasis placed on Nora’s reading profile preferences at the expense of the group's preferences. The group concluded because Nora hailed from Kentucky and liked to talk about being a Baptist minister’s daughter, her reading selections could be attributed to her desire for relatable material. Unfortunately, the group did not relate to her choices, or share her experiences. They also complained that she gave them very little information to make informed decisions when voting on the selections. They seemed to feel they were flying blind since she only listed the titles, placing the burden on group members to research them individually, a time-consuming task more in her purview. Another complaint about her choices- the quality of the books. Like The Butterfly and the Violin, the group found the selection's authors writing skills were lacking and the readability of the texts poor. They did not enjoy the books they were reading, but because of their commitment to the club, the forced themselves to read the books! One member said, “It was a real pain to read it!”. The contrast in facilitator styles underscored the necessity of professional distance in book suggestions.

Since they joked that I should apply to be the new adult services librarian and I possessed insider information on the book club facilitators discussed, I naturally began to wonder what it would be like to facilitate this group of ladies. Given the opportunity to do so, my first step would be to contact Carrie and ask her advice. My second would be to create personalized reading profiles for the book club members, to get up to speed on their like and dislikes. The Kansas City Public Library offers patrons a portal to createreader profiles; I would use this template to survey the book club. The KCPL template asks patrons to check the box on genre likes and dislikes and preferred formats. It also asks open ended questions about appeal factors (characters, setting plot etc.), and provides a section to list three books recently read that they user liked. Finally, the profile asks multiple choice questions about preferred challenge level, comfort zones, content filters for sex and violence. In the final section, patrons are asked to write in other helpful details. One of the most useful pieces of information for me in this scenario would be books they enjoyed in the past. I'd want to follow up to clarify appeal factors of these books to increase the likelihood future books might meet their criteria.

Screenshot of Personalized Reading Profile KCPL

Conclusions and Stray Thoughts

According to the New York Times’ Judith Newman (2017), book clubs are not only, “a staple of a certain kind of literary life, a core part of a person’s identity” but they can also be quite cutthroat and ruthless social microcosms. Passions flare and enmities and resentments can grow in book clubs. Membership can be socially inclusive and an intellectual “oasis”, or alternately, the clubs can be callous and cruel- casting out underperformers or shunning “off brand” members. Slate's Nathan Heller observes, “book-clubbing is fraught with ulterior motives”, such as desert, or drinking. Heller notes that book clubs began in the mid 18^th century in England, in the form of salons, hosted by “women of means and leisure” locked out of mainstream intellectual pursuits. They came to be known as “bluestockings”, a derisive nickname that mocked their aspirations to improve their minds. This derisive attitude is perpetuated in the ambivalence of some self-styled literary luminaries towards the deeper significance of book clubs and their gendered power over book sales and publishers’ bottom lines. Cultural critics handwringing amounts to, basically, ‘if it his popular, how can it be true art?’ (Szalai, 2013). Or as Jonathan Franzen, cut by the double-edged sword of Oprah’s book club, worried, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘If women like it, will men want to read it?’

Ultimately, according to Elizabeth Long, author of Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (2003), despite the persistent cultural imagery of the solitary reader, “the habit of reading is profoundly social" (p.10). And this social habit requires “infrastructure”, which can include book publishing, marketing and distribution, reading instruction in public schools, and also libraries. Reading as an activity, she argues, is shaped and constructed by the framing of what to read and how to read it. Authorities, whether critics and reviewers or academics, or publisher and librarians, all have impact on what readers have access to and which competing voices get heard (Long, p.11). But readers, consumers and book clubbers (associated with women though attended by all) have a say too. Burwell (2007), in "Reading Lolita in Times of War: Women's Book Clubs and the Politics of Reception", for instance, argues that, “women’s book clubs are significant sites for learning, dialogue and the accumulation of cultural capital” (p.281). Perhaps book clubs are viewed with ambivalence by some cultural arbiters because their economic power and reading preferences threaten their death grip on their long-held domain to determine what is worthy of reading?

Final Thoughts

This assignment offered me the opportunity to explore book clubs as a reader and an aspiring information professional. The experience was very positive and enlightening. A more powerful illustration of the importance of placing emphasis on readers’ needs versus imposing the preference of the readers’ advisor could not be found! The choice to attend the event at my former place of employment was a good one, as the insider knowledge offered a layer of context for the conversations about the administration of the book club and the group’s opinions of the facilitators ‘Carrie’ and ‘Nora’. The group’s dissatisfaction with their selections also exposed the necessity to incorporate not only appeal factors, but professional acumen when offering book suggestions. Clearly the group was interested in the setting of The Butterfly and the Violin, (Europe during WWII), and the subject (The Resistance, the role of art in resistance, and the Holocaust), and the plot, (a privileged Austrian musician risks all to save Jews from the Nazis)- but, the execution of the idea, the writing style, and the mismatched tone of the modern (cozy) and historical (bleak) plot lines, and the weak characterization, spoiled their enjoyment. The biggest take away of this assignment: the insight that readers’ advisory is both an art and a science.

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References

Burwell, C. (2007). Reading Lolita in times of war: women’s book clubs and the politics of 

reception. Intercultural Education, 18 (4), 281-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980701605147

Heller, N. (2011). Book clubs: Why do we love them so much? Is it the zucchini bread? 

Slate.http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2011/07/book_clubs.html

Lindelof, D.  & Abrams, J.J. (Writers). October 4, 2006. LOST: A tale of two cities. O’ahu, Hawaii, U.S.A. Bad Robot.

Litlovers.com. (n.d.) Starting a book club. Ilovelibraries.org. http://www.ilovelibraries.org/booklovers/bookclub/bookclub

Long, E. (2003). Book clubs: Women and the uses of reading in everyday life. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Lostpedia. (n.d.). Book club. http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Book_club

Szalai, J. (2013). Oprah Winfrey, book critic. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/oprah-winfrey-book-critic