Book club for the rest of us

Claire Ryan’s latest FUSION Saint John article appeared in today’s Telegraph-Journal:

My friends and I have batted around for ages the idea of starting a book club. It seems so sophisticated – tackling a piece of fiction, and then sharing your interpretations and insights with others. If we had quit talking about it and just started reading, we’d probably all have comprehensive personal libraries by now. However, we have never been able to move beyond the “we should start a book club” conversation. The problem hinged on the details – how do you actually figure out how to pick books, delegate hosting duties and agree on reasonable timeframes? Even as a pretty avid reader, the idea that I would have to start and finish a book within a pre-determined time period seems ambitious. Who needs another deadline?

Enter Sarah Jones of Bean Books with a solution for aspiring book clubbers with similar commitment issues. She has started hosting the Thursday Night Book Club, a weekly gathering for Saint John readers to meet and discuss books of their own choosing. The rules are simple: the book must be fiction, and it must be something you have read or are reading.

“I wanted to provide something less formal than the traditional book club,” says Jones. “More like a ‘let’s get together, drink some coffee and talk about books’ rather than an in-depth analysis of a single book. It gives participants the flexibility to come as frequently or as infrequently as they like. You can drop in any Thursday and still be a part of the conversation, no matter what you’re reading at the time.”

Last Thursday, a handful of Saint John readers gathered at the uptown bookstore, current read in hand. Everyone gave a brief synopsis of his or her book, asked questions about the other selections, and the conversation took on a life of its own from there.

“I’m hoping that a fluid dialogue will build up over time, so that conversations may start to sound like ‘I heard you talk about this book a couple of weeks ago, and it sounded interesting so I gave it a go and thought this or that’,” says Jones.

If the first meeting was any indication, this club is off to a good start; last week’s dialogue touched on pandemics, Biblical humour, CBC podcasts and historical Venice, all within the span of an hour.

The Thursday Night Book Club gives local readers the chance to meet one another, discuss preferences, and encourage others to test the waters with a new genre, author or historical period.

The Thursday Night Book Club is held Thursdays at Bean Books, 122 Germain St., from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Claire Ryan works with MT&L Public Relations Ltd. and is a member of the FUSION Saint John board. Her column appears on Tuesdays. She can be reached at cryan@mtlpr.ca