Image by Eva Szoboszlay
My mother meets once a month with a handful of friends and co-workers to drink wine, eat snacks and crack jokes about the book they read in the past month. When I was younger, my sister and I rolled our eyes at how excited she was about her book club and how often throughout the month she commented on the book she was currently reading. We assumed it was just a boring activity for old people.
Now, I have stopped being mean to my lovely mother and instead am trying to answer the following questions: when did we, as younger folks, begin to disregard the value of book clubs? How could I know what value they do or do not hold? To what extent do book clubs still exist, and do they have potential for a comeback?
Olive Savoie ’23 participates in a small book club in her hometown of San Francisco. They always make sure to rotate book choices so that everyone gets a chance to pick a book they want to read.
“When I pick a book I try to choose something everyone can be excited about, and we also aim for stuff that is recently published,” Savoie said.
Though some English classes do explore more recent texts, the informal environment is something unique to spaces outside the classroom. “What I love is that we all read books differently … there is no putting anyone on the spot, and it feels communal,” Savoie said.
Everyone in a book club reads because they want to, and if it starts to feel like a chore, people are allowed to not finish the book, skip sections, complain, and more. There is no grading system. Since so much reading is done in an academic setting, students may be deterred from recreational reading as a whole, and book clubs help take the pressure off of it.
Some book clubs also offer the space to explore different genres; with so many books in circulation and so many options available, a theme can give a sense of centrality to a book club and offer insight into subjects that are often not given much attention in the classroom. For instance, one of my friends recently started a sapphic, or women-loving-women, themed book club at her community college because she wanted to read more lesbian literature.
The possibilities are endless. What is stopping us from starting or joining transgender book clubs? Psychology book clubs? African American book clubs? Young adult fiction book clubs? These do exist—for instance Noname’s book club, which focuses on authors of color, and many transgender book clubs online. These are not impenetrable spaces; we can easily join them or start small clubs ourselves with a couple friends. On top of this, there are many book clubs around Portland to seek out.
Book clubs are not dying out, but they are perhaps waning in a world where school and work absorbs all of our time and attention. It seems like it is becoming harder and harder to remember that reading does not have to be a high-stakes activity.
Are we so influenced by academia that we put too much emphasis on sounding intelligent rather than authentically engaging with writing? Are we, students, so caught up in our education that we forget something we regularly do as a chore can also function as a recreational activity and a connection with one of the oldest forms of art known to humanity? Or are we just sleep-deprived and lacking in time?
In the flurry of student life, any type of hobby or planned social activity might seem like too much of a hassle, but whether or not you are interested in joining a book club, it is worth it to at least give yourself the space to do so. They serve as opportunities for unfiltered intellectual discussion outside of the classroom, allowing people to stretch their analytical muscles without the seemingly high-stakes world of academia looming over them.
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