I was incredibly flattered recently when a friend whom I consider one of the most sophisticated and intellectual of my circle, invited me to join her book club. It's not that I don't already have many other intellectual things to do with my evenings (as long as "The Simpsons" is over), it's just that I was thrilled to participate in what has become the urban equivalent of sorority rush. So many of my friends had started or were already in book clubs that I began to fear I wasn't going to get asked to "pledge". In cities across America, large and small, book clubs are taking the place of extra-marital affairs as distraction for intelligent urban women, and if you haven't yet been asked to join a book club well, either you're a Foreign Legionnaire hiding out in a distant, sand-locked outpost of the desert, or more likely, it's only a matter of time.
For the present generation of women, book clubs became popular when Oprah began reading and promoting books on her daytime television show. This was of course in the days when first-time book authors were poor and grateful for any crumbs of attention that might be tossed their way, unlike the present, when 21-year-old authors are annoyed if they are the second guest on Leno. Soon after author Jonathan Franzen became irrationally insulted when Oprah read his book "The Corrections" and lifted it from the oblivion wherein it would have most likely lingered, Oprah decided she herself didn't want to be in a book club, complaining that there just not enough "good books" (perhaps she meant "humble authors").
The book club baton was passed to Kelly Ripa, which had the potential to make even the most bookish of us give up the whole thing for periodicals. But instead, the reading thing has become a newly found old pleasure that has sort of wafted into our collective unconscious like the smell of fresh bread through an open window. Book clubs provide today's over-extended women an acceptable way to socialize without the guilt of it being purely leisure.
Many people talk about how they used to read all the time when they were young and how much they used to love it. I for one, remember getting books for Christmas, usually Nancy Drew mysteries, and spending all that day reading, not speaking a word to my brothers (who were busy outside in the back yard with their own Christmas gifts, attempting to put each other's eyes out). Even then, girlfriends would pass beloved books to each other: mostly sweet, girlish stories about girl sleuths or clever airline stewardesses. These were supplemented of course by books we considered "sexy", by Erica Jong or Philip Roth, found on our parent's bedside tables or more likely, under their beds. A book that had a scene where two people disappeared into a bedroom or any mention at all of anyone's "panties" would send us into red-faced paralysis and would be passed around with guilty terror at slumber parties for the whole slumber party season.
(I could top even those by pulling out one of my father's medical journals, wherein photos of bizarre genital afflictions were guaranteed to send at least one girl screaming out of the room. These were met not with titillation but with wonder and would change the party dynamics so that instead of talking about sex, we'd end up discussing seriously tangential topics like, "What would you do if you didn't have any eyebrows?")
But most people find they just don't have time to read. It takes a certain kind of a commitment, not unlike exercise or marriage, all of which ultimately make you feel good but are awfully hard to start. So I was extremely pleased when my girlfriend Pam called me and asked if I would be willing to join her book club to which each core member had invited one friend. "How does it work?" I asked. "'How's it work?’ It's a book club!" she responded. "We choose a book, we read it and then we get together and talk about it. How hard could it be?" Not so easy as it turns out.
First of all, when you join a book club it means you actually have to read the books. No kidding, there's no way around it. And not every book is going to be one that you want to read or would even enjoy using as a paperweight. At these moments, when you see the nine hundred page life history of Moses Cleveland held up for your approval, you must either say "Yeah", "Nay" or "No way, Sister"! Of course the latter is generally considered rude, and reserved for gigantic leather bound books with dictionary sized print and tissue paper leaves, pulled out just as summer is starting and it's all we can do to finish our "OK!" magazines. To ensure that no one goes away thinking they'd rather have joined a knitting circle, the book decision process is a fairly democratic one.
The first thing we do in my book club is weigh the book. By that I don't mean we weigh its length against the time we have available or weigh it against other books of its genre, or weigh its educational value versus its entertainment ratio. I mean we actually weigh the book. Each of us in turn gets a chance to heft the book, holding it in one hand or both hands, lifting it up and down slightly, turning it over, seeing if it gets any lighter if we split it open and heft it again.
We utilize our own personal sense of weights and measures: "light" weighs about as much as a single fork: that would be your Penguin paperback and your pithy-quotes-at-the-cash-register type books. "Not too light" would be the approximate weight of a pair of strappy sandals in a shoe box, like for example, your latest Abused-Intern Tell-All, or the: I'm-A-Married-Woman-Who's-Having-Trouble-Having-It-All novel. A middleweight book might balance the scales against a wooden cutting board, depending of course on the thickness of the cover; those would be your "Memoirs of a Geisha" or a biography of someone with very little to say like, perhaps, Larry Birkhead.
"Heavy" as far as we're concerned would be the approximate weight of an empty clay casserole dish: those would be your original hardback editions of a typical Tom Wolfe novel or any one of the recent Looking-Back-At-the-Last-Century-By-an-Attractive-Newscaster tomes. "Too heavy" would be the weight of a full casserole dish, with maybe lasagna in it, which would include Webster's dictionary, anything by Salman Rushdie or any biography of a philandering politician from the '30s. It's not precisely that these books are "too heavy" in content but that they are in fact, just too heavy and have the potential of spraining your wrist if you try holding them with one hand, and will, in fact, demolish anything below them in your purse. They can be used effectively for self defense: one can always throw them at a mugger.
So now you have your assignment, and the first thing you do is look at the calendar and count each of the days between now and the date you have to finish the book, figuring in several days of trashy magazine reading, one or two Sunday papers, a couple nights of reality TV, and at least one indecipherable instruction manual for yet another digital product.
And then comes the reading. Not every book makes you long for the moment when you'll be alone with it, to crack its spine and dive into its world. Some of them sit on your nightstand like a fat Buddha, arms crossed, glaring at you, wondering when you're going to pick them up and get to work. Some of them make you so depressed by the third page that you have to rush out to a magazine stand to buy a "Vogue". There've been afternoons when I've sat among piles of laundry and dirty dishes, one eye on the clock, reading frantically to finish before the meeting that evening.
But every once in a while there's that one you'd never have picked up on your own: a book that is utterly enchanting or hypnotically interesting, or which makes you giddy with its observations and glad that there are writers like these. At those moments, you remember your love of reading, happy to be an explorer once again.
Our meetings are held at each member's house in turn about every six weeks. The reunion itself usually takes a good thirty minutes before we even get to the book, as follows: 4 to 5 minutes of telling each other how fabulous we look, 2 minutes denying how fabulous we look, 3 minutes complimenting each other's home furnishings ("Is that new?"), 2 minutes discussing how difficult or how easy it was to find the furnishings, 12 minutes talking about our spouse, child or boyfriend (or lacking those, the cute guy we rode up with in the elevator), and then roughly 8 minutes where we tell each other how we're doing ("I don't know; lately I've just been in a funk. Do you think I should get my teeth whitened?" to "We have finally concluded that my sister-in-law is an idiot," to "I've decided to get implants."). These are crucial bonding moments and are essential to the expediency of the actual meeting. Without them we've found the group tends to get distracted during the book discussion, breaking into subgroups to discuss shoes and Angelina Jolie's upper arms.
Like I assume most book clubs brag, our membership is made up of women who are strong, smart, independent thinkers who are, more importantly, very, very funny, capable of hilarious and pointed opinions. The discussion of the books is always interesting. A book we all love is rare, translating into an hour of favorite moments recalled and favorite lines reread aloud with reverential enthusiasm. More frequently is the book we all hate, for which the evening turns into a trash fest of the author, his or her beliefs, and the book jacket photo. The most passionate discussions erupt around book endings: half the group disappointed that for example, it didn't end happily; the other half insisting that it couldn't. After we've dissected the book to our heart's content, we eat (fattening food at a friend’s house doesn’t count), drink (lots) and chat, sometimes about topics the book has generated, more frequently about how unbelievably expensive it is to get a hair cut these days.
Once the selection of the next book has been made, our evening, for all intents and purposes, is over. Reluctantly we gather our stuff and head out, but the rate of chatter that starts up as we're nearing the door is like last call at a singles bar. We say our good-byes like we're standing on a dock watching a ship pull away, as we leave one world to reenter another.
New friends were not the point when the book club was started; we have barely enough time for our own. But being with new people, discussing things outside of the realm of redundant days and predictable conversation has been a powerful thing; an opportunity to use our intellect for more than figuring out how to gracefully exit a department store after our kid has thrown up on the clerk. It's not the books that keep us juggling our schedules, it's the whole package - the camaraderie, the conversation, the pure haven it provides in the context of lives filled with errands. For me, it has become a necessity for health and well being: like an aerobics class for the brain.
If you haven't been asked to join a book club (yet), start your own. The way I look at it, it's an organization devoted to the protection of at least one natural resource we can all get behind: our minds.
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