Book Club Experience

For this assignment, I visited a monthly book club at a small town library. The premise of this book club is a provided lunch with the book discussion. This month’s novel was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I have read this novel, so I thought I would sit in as a participant and engage in the discussion when possible.

The first thing I noticed about this discussion group is the age group of the readers. The book club starts at noon on a Thursday, making way for the elderly population who no longer work. They were all women above the age of 55. While I expected this, it still is disheartening to not see a diverse group for the book club. I have not been to a discussion during the evening to see if the age group is younger and more diverse so I decided to ask the library employee about it. She said the book club groups are all similar to the group at this book club, even during nights and weekends.

Right away, I realized that the book would not be the main topic of discussion for the group. The group consisted of 7 women who come to the book club every month. The first 30 minutes of the book club did not deal with the book club at all. The ladies talked to each other about their lives and new around the town. Then, they all got up and got food the begin the discussion. The food was provided by the leader, an employee of the library. It was definitely enough for lunch, which was nice.

The leader, Joann, asks questions and lets the others answer first. She asks mostly yes or no questions, but I think it is because the members can continue the discussion afterwards. The discussion flowed easily, but there was one member who did overtake the discussion a lot. Joann did not do anything to facilitate this issue and it seemed like others wanted to answer but could not get a word in. It was unfortunate because I got the sense that this is an issue during every book club discussion. Everyone did have time to input their opinions after she was done talking, but she did talk for a couple of minutes after every question before anyone else could talk.

The group normally discusses books that were recently best sellers. They are able to receive books through Evergreen Indiana, and there are multiple copies available. At the end of the book discussion, the members can pick up the book for the next month. They also discuss new books to read for the book club.

While it was not the best discussion group, the atmosphere was really fun. It was located in the library’s meeting room and had plenty of space for everyone. The tables were set up in a rectangle shape, so everyone could see each other and that made the discussion flow better.

The main takeaway I had was that this book club is not entirely a book club, and at times it was hard to feel a part of the group. The group has been coming to the library for this book club for over a year and most of them have not missed a single month. They asked me questions about myself for a minute, but they really enjoy their tight knit group. Joann was great at talking to me about the novel and ourselves while the rest of the group were talking to each other before the discussion began. I think the discussion overall went well and everyone had at least one chance to input their opinions.