Book Club Observation

The book club moderator is a former middle school teacher. She states that this probably influences her approach to running meetings. She is new at running book clubs for adults and the library branch she works at, where the meeting is being held, has not held a regular book club in years. So, the patrons that attend are new to this book club, if not new to book clubs in general. I had reached out to the book club leader. She is a colleague at another branch in my library system and I had asked to shadow her meeting. Her book club is held on Tuesday nights, which fits my schedule, and they were reading How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang, which I had been interested in reading. I was able to read about halfway before the meeting. 

I arrived at the book club early so that I could help Giselle set up and hear about her process. We set up the room so that tables and chairs made a square so that everyone could comfortably see each other. Giselle also set up a table near the entryway with cookies, napkins, and water bottles. She said she thought it was always important to offer snacks. This is one of those lessons that carries over from working with teens, where you learn that offering food will bring teens in, maybe it would work for adults as well.  

She explains that they are reading books by “new” authors since they are a new book club. She thought that would be a fun idea for a little while but did not plan on always sticking to it after she started getting regular attendees. Just before beginning the book club, she takes typed-up questions and cuts them out individually, folds them, and places them in a bowl. 

The group is small, there are only 5 of us and only one has attended a previous meeting. A surprise to me was that everyone was on the younger side (20s – 40s). Perhaps this is because it was an evening book club. Gisselle greets everyone and asks their names as they come in. She starts with some general discussion about what kind of books the attendees normally read, as we wait to see if any others will walk in. She then explains that she is going to pass around a bowl of questions and wants everyone to take two pieces of paper out, each will have a question. We’ll go around the room and discuss each question in turn. The attendees only need to read the question to the group, they do not have to give their thoughts, but they can if they want to.  

Each question was open-ended. The discussion was slow to start as everyone tried to feel out the room because there were weighty issues being discussed (race, gender, prostitution, death) but it did get going and often veered from the initial question. There were a few questions no one had comments on, but everyone read a question and had thoughts on at least one point. The book had some gruesome details about a decomposing body that got everyone talking and a decent amount of discussion about the gender of one of the main characters. The story of the character’s gender expression is nuanced and not explicitly labeled as transgender perhaps because the book was set during the California Gold Rush (1848?) when no such label existed. When there was a lull in the conversation, we moved on to the next question to keep things going. No one ended up stealing the spotlight at this meeting.  

The discussion lasted about an hour and to wrap up Gisselle let everyone know they could write their name and an email address on the sign-in sheet if they wanted to get updates about future meetings. She says she will also send out questions for each book ahead of time with a meeting reminder.