You Don't Have to Like the Book

I met Debra Linn a year ago when I was in Miami when she asked me to speak at a Book Club Mixer that Books & Books, one of my favorite bookstores, was hosting in Coral Gables. I leapt at the opportunity and found myself part of a fabulously fun afternoon with close to 200 book club members. We repeated this experience last October with a Book Club Twister Mixer where Debra again wowed me with her creativity in pulling together an event for readers from clubs all over the South Florida area. I have let her know that I will hop on a plane to do events with her any day, any time. And it's not just because I swoon over the pool at the Biltmore which is close to the store. It's because it's a treat to be with someone who loves book clubs and books so much.

You don't have to like the book.

The toughest part of being in a book club is choosing the book. Well, other than finding a date when everyone can meet. But once you've found that elusive time without work, spouses, children or basketball tickets, then you want to talk about something other than work, spouses, children or basketball tickets. Like, say, the book.

The book needs to join the conversation, too. Not in audiobook fashion. It just needs to say something, about anything. Some books, as entertaining as they may be, just won't get you through the hellos. Some books are too familiar, some too similar.

It's so easy to fall into the comfortable fit of international-women-in-distress novels. These make for some of the best book club books as they are engaging, enlightening, entertaining. Still, after a while, A Thousand Splendid Suns bleeds into Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which bleeds into Memoirs of Geisha.

Branch out. Take a risk. And know that an unpopular book can make for the best discussion. Once we free ourselves of having to, you know, like the book, the possibilities are endless.

Now, you don't torture yourself or your fellow book-clubbers. Don't choose a book knowing you won't like it. Suffering through the book doesn't make the experience more worthwhile. This isn't school. This is fun. Really.

Don't read something just because it's good for you. Read because it will give you something to talk about. When book clubbers don't like a book, boy oh boy, do they have a lot to say.

And now we've got ourselves some genuine book club fun.

Last month, I chose The Gathering, Anne Enright's Man Booker prize-winning novel, for Books & Books' ready-made book club meetings. Out of the 25 total participants in two meals-and-meetings sessions, one person --- count 'em, 1 --- liked the book. And that includes the facilitator. But every single woman (yes, all the participants are women) liked the discussions.

Most started out demanding to know why I had chosen this book and then regaling the group with examples of how difficult it was to fight through it. I chose the book, as I do all the books for these meetings, to create variety. I like to have at least one non-American author in the bunch (we announce the dates four sessions at a time); it had just won the Man Booker Prize; it was a different sort of story than the others I chose; and two fellow booksellers, whose taste I trust, had been recommending it left and right. There was method to the madness.

This explanation did not make them happy --- until they started talking. They had more to dig into, more varied opinions of the book. They disliked it in different ways and in discussing those differences, they started to find merit, aspects they did like. One person's torturous paragraph is another's artful symbolism, and in between, comes a greater understanding of a character. The facilitator, who had to read the book twice to find anything he enjoyed in it, found paintings to illuminate the book's Biblical allusions.

And the discussion kept rolling. In the end, there still was just that one book-clubber who enjoyed The Gathering, but they all enjoyed the book club gathering.

---Debra Linn