Someone suggested that her club of young mothers read the “Thorn Birds,” Bette Oveson recalled. For a group of women living in Richfield, Utah, it was more than eye-opening; it was life-changing.
Beyond the romantic relationship between Meggie and Ralph, central to the storyline, the club was able to discuss extended family relationships, explore themes like loyalty versus values, and contrast the tension between commitment and ambition. All timeless and worthwhile themes.
Surveys show that about 13 million Americans participate in some type of book club ranging from televised versions like Oprah Winfrey’s, Reese Witherspoon’s and Jenna Bush Hager’s book clubs, to community- and neighborhood-based discussion groups. There are even online discussion groups based on interests, genres and personal background, with platforms like Goodreads hosting thousands of different interest groups online.
While women predominate in book clubs, representing about 88% of all participants, men have begun participating at a much higher rate than in the past.
A Reddit poll some years ago attempted to find out why the participation rate among men was so low and couldn’t come up with any kind of conclusive answer. The Tough Guys Book Club, established in 2012, is bucking the gender trend by organizing local chapters and providing reading lists and discussion questions for men’s reading groups.
While Massachusetts Bay colony renegade Anne Hutchinson is credited with starting the first book club in America in 1634, her “reading circle” mostly critiqued local sermons rather than read and discussed books. (It didn’t take long for the preachers to condemn that kind of unsolicited feedback!)
Early American writer Hannah Adams and friends, on the other hand, began reading and discussing fiction and poetry together regularly in the late 1760s and book clubs as we know them were launched.
Since then, book clubs have popped up in various places and for various reasons, but they skyrocketed in the early 1970s. Among major cities surveyed this year by SmartAssets, Salt Lake City ranked ninth on a combined score for book clubs, members and bookstores, but third in the country for book club membership per 10,000 residents. It seems that locally we not only like to read books, but also talk about them.
As women, in particular, began looking for ways to socialize outside the home or office and find like-minded individuals with whom to talk about new ideas, book clubs boomed.
Julie Fackrell from Cache Valley, who participates in two different book clubs, has benefited greatly — in part, thanks to the inclusion of members with many different backgrounds and ages as well as diverse interests and ideas. These groups meet monthly and set aside various differences to share their enthusiasm and love for books and reading.
In many ways, researchers have said these book clubs became awareness-building and self-help groups in American history that not only promoted common interests but also provided mutual support.
“We didn’t want men,” Audrey Zucker said about her book club, which has been meeting regularly for years. “We wanted the female voice, the female point of view.”
Audrey’s book club follows a familiar pattern popularized by Winfrey: a few friends get together for dinner or appetizers, share selections from a book they’ve all read, give empathic interpretations of specific passages, and then share personal stories that relate to that passage.
In this now common approach, books have “lessons” that can be gleaned from the characters’ lives and discussions can become personally transformative for the book club members. More than intellectual discussions, they become the basis for doing better or being better in some way.
These book gatherings can happen among neighbors, friends or even family members. But they don’t necessarily have to even draw on existing relationships. And there are some surprising advantages from bringing together people who didn’t previously know each other.
I recently visited with older patrons at the Washington County library in St. George and asked them why they joined the library book club and why they keep returning month after month.
Many of the responses emphasized the social interaction that occurred among group members, enabling them to meet new people, make new friends and get others’ point of view on various topics.
I found it interesting that most of these patrons came by themselves and didn’t socialize together outside of the book club meetings. When I asked why, several said they liked the anonymity and privacy of expressing themselves without worrying that much about upholding their personal reputation or justifying some of their perspectives. They had what is sometimes termed “psychological safety.”
Psychological safety involves respecting each person’s point of view without “calling out” others because of their values, beliefs or opinions. Library patrons told me that public book discussion groups made it easier to speak more freely because they liked each other but saw their relationships as limited and temporary.
In this case, not having any outside or long-term relationships with others (such as neighbors or church or family members), interestingly enough, fostered more open and deeper discussions.
While reading has its own rewards, when the experience is shared with others, it can promote everyday practical insight and enhance personal self-reflection. When reading occurs not only in private but also is publicly shared, discussed and considered, it can enhance both mental health and life satisfaction.
Older adults, in particular, can find meaning and fellowship in public book clubs with casual friends, what Melinda Blau and Karen Fingerman call “weak social ties” in their book ”Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters into Life-Changing Events.”
The ease in which casual friends can talk to each other about deep and meaningful events — sometimes even better than neighbors or family members — is explained by the “stranger on the train phenomenon.”
This well-documented effect describes how more fleeting relationships with strangers on a train (or airplane or bus) sometimes prompts greater willingness to share personal, intimate or sensitive information, compared with close friends, family members or spouses. With a book as a catalyst and a willingness to relate events in a book to our life experiences, book clubs that mirror “a stranger on a train” can lead to profound and impactful discussions.
Want to learn something new? Read a book. Want to find more purpose and meaning? Join a book club. Want to gain personal insights you can use? Meet up with casual friends.
Turn a page on boredom, join a book club.