Book Club Virgin (And Proud Of It)

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

I’ve been invited to join book clubs, and while outwardly I might politely smile, inwardly I heave. It’s a prospect I find about as appealing as attending the Canadian Academic Accounting Association’s annual Christmas party. (Although, come to think of it, the CAAA might at least have decent booze. I’m willing to bet the majority of book clubs are strictly President’s Choice Chai (decaf) or at best, white wine – from a large-sized bottle.)

The first time I was summoned actually pre-dated rampant usage of the term “book club.” Back then I was slaving away in a shiny new bookstore when my fellow overeducated-and-underpaid-for-the-work colleagues invited me to join them in what they termed “a book chat.” I declined. Was it not enough that I had to endure 40 hours a week with them in desultory conversations about which books to “face out,” let alone spend miserable lunch breaks together in something defined by that pantywaist word, “chat”? My recalcitrance was duly noted, and suddenly I was cold shouldered around the sink tap that passed as water cooler.

This instinctive aversion to the notion of book clubs springs from a deep-rooted belief in the essence of the experience of reading. (Does the phrase “solitary pleasure” ring any pleasant associative bells?) Reading is the greatest of great escapes. Reading is permission to simply be, to exist in another world, the world of the book. But you can’t maintain that Zen state when someone is wittering away about plot, tone and setting as though they are the new holy trinity.

Book club advocates still reading at this point are likely frothing about the obvious differences between reading and discussing, jawing on and on about how “talking books” is a pleasure unto itself. Sure it is. Just as discussing your moron boss, or those bastards in the NHL, or the fine points of Ukrainian politics no one ever talked about until last November are also pleasures. Pleasures in passing. Pleasures perhaps best shared with an intimate, as opposed to a cult – whoops, a “club.” For example: Friend #1: “I just read that fantastic The something Incident of the Dog in the Whosit. But I don’t think you’ll like it, it has all these diagrams where you’ll think there should be words.” Friend #2: “I laughed myself stupid over the latest Shopaholic. Too bad you don’t appreciate crap the way I do.”

This type of exchange is an organic pleasure, if you will, and a useful transmission of information not requiring the contrivance of reading a pre-ordained book and dutifully “going to a meeting” to discuss its contents. The latter manufactures your experience; it does a disservice to the book-seeking heart. It puts that tender organ in danger of losing the pure experience of reading, the spontaneous pleasure of talking about what’s been read, the candy shop joy of choosing what you alone will read next. Let’s face it: clubs of any kind exist to homogenize opinion, or at the very least, tenaciously mould the honest instincts of their members.

It would be fair at this point to acknowledge that yes, there is a big difference between book clubs that meet in people’s living rooms and book clubs that are simply covert arms of the publishing industry. Take, for example, bookclubs.ca – anyone notice the teensy Random House link at the bottom of the page?

There is also a difference between the power wielded by Oprah or “Richard and Judy” (Britain’s “perma-tanned first couple of sofa television,” as the Independent would have it), and the clout of the Type “A” personality in your book club.

Nonetheless, your cute little ol’ book club is not necessarily exempt from the canny wiles of the publishing industry. Book club consultants and books telling you how to run a book club are just a small sign of this greater force at work. Another, those annoying “reader’s guides” that began popping up in trade paperback editions of “women’s fiction” about five years ago. These guides cost publishers more money to produce – but they lead to greater sales, since book clubs tend to choose them over a guide-less edition. Most publishers target book clubs on their websites for the same reason. Book clubs are being gently led to the well for a long drink of whatever publishers want them to swallow. Because publishers know that the key to selling books over a long period of time is entirely in the hands, or mouths, of average humble readers – a.k.a. word of mouth. What better conduit than book clubs?

Should you require scientific proof you might want to turn to the American Physical Society’s journal, Physical Review Letters, which published a report last year tracing the commercial success of books on Amazon.com’s Top 50 List from 2002 to 2004. They discovered the effect of book clubs on sales was of greater financial significance than the hoopla created by a major marketing campaign. The latter goes like this: you see a gargantuan advert for, say, The Oxford History of Western Music, so naturally you run out and buy all six volumes. But once the ad stops running oddly enough no one is chattering about the OHWM, so sales plummet. The book club effect is the opposite, long-term and insidious. Or, as one of the report’s researchers concluded: “If you manage to convince a small handful of small book clubs, the likelihood of really penetrating the network of buyers and selling a lot is higher.” I rest my case.

Once upon a time, back in the heady sales figure days following the first Oprah book club phenom, I was in a pub enjoying a quiet drink, unaware that Ann-Marie MacDonald, author of the Oprah’d Fall on Your Knees, was doing same. A woman of a certain age and of a certain gushiness approached her.

“My book club did you, and we loved it,” she genuflected.

I waited for MacDonald to ask, “Why didn’t you just read it?” But instead she merely smiled. Of course, considering the financial consequences of being “done” by Oprah, maybe she’d decided being “done” by any club was a bit of all right.

Presumably this encounter left the author feeling chuffed. It left me feeling gloomy. Almost as gloomy as when I read the words of Sue Zimmerman, 50, in an article about book clubs published recently by California’s Ventura County Star.

“Sometimes you need to be in a book club because you’re reading and reading and you just don’t get it,” said Zimmerman. “That’s what clubs do. They help you get it.”

If I met Sue Zimmerman, 50, I’d suggest otherwise. Because maybe if you “just don’t get it,” you’re not necessarily meant to. Or maybe you should just read another book, one that you do “get,” one that you actually want to read.

So consider yourself warned. Beware of book club fanatics: marionettes gently dancing for the publishing industry’s puppeteers. These people want to tell you what to read, when, and how to read it.

Li Robbins is a Toronto-based writer and producer.

Letters:

I am pretty ambivalent when it comes to the value of book clubs but in their defense I'd argue that they offer readers the opportunity to savour books chosen by their members, each of whom has his/her own taste and so brings a little variety to the reading life. As a former book clubber myself, I enjoyed the opportunity to try something a little different from the high-end literary fiction that is my personal cup o' tea. And, being a real reader myself, and knowing that all too often after reading a book that totally rocks your world, you find yourself in the position that you haven't really anyone to share your enthusiasm with. Book clubs can sometimes provide that kind of space and I think it's not to be mocked. I also wanted to note that never in my book clubs did we ever drink the kind of plonque your columnist suggests is the typical fare of book clubbers -- in point of fact, it was the high-end wines and delicious meals that I finally did my last book club in!

Jeffrey Canton
Toronto, ON

Hooray for Li Robbins. I have resisted Book Clubs since they became fashionable. They reminded me of high school English lessons. I can see their value as a social outing (perhaps) or if that is what it takes to get one reading but I think the joy of reading is the private pleasure. I do enjoy discussion with a friend or colleague who happens to have read the same book but it would not be the same if it were an orchestrated, fixed time duty.

Jeni Darling
Dundas, Ontario

I was a member of a book club for several years but our club was quite loose and disorganized, with a "type A" at the helm for any of the real discussions. Mostly we just made excuses for why we didn't read "the book" and drank wine. I embarrassed our club early on by suggesting "Spanky" by I forget who now -- essentially a trashy sexy vampire novel which "lowered the calibre" of our club, but certainly generated some heated discussions. (Mainly about how we should pick more "literate" books) Pah! Things went on for a year or two after my dressing down, until, that is, the members one by one began having babies. Then it became a mother's club and those of us not interested in that pastime dropped out from the sheer boredom of listening to endless tales of the trials and tribulations of motherhood. From what I hear it is still limping along and heading ever so much closer to your article's description.

Stephanie
Toronto, Ontario

Li Robbins seems to assume that book clubbers are mindless book sheep, confined to reading only what the limits of their club provides. Most of the book clubbers I know - including one book editor - read a number of books each month. Most provide the solitary pleasure Robbins mentions. One is read for the book club, which provides the camaraderie of a group of people brought together over a common interest. Like joining a softball team or a choir or a writing group. I suppose Robbins would scorn them all. Robbins feels she was shunned by her co-workers for refusing to join their club. I don't suppose it would instead have anything to do with the bitter contempt for them she shows in her reasons for doing so?

Brent Se
Hubbards, Nova Scotia

Obviously, you have never been to a session of OUR book group hidden deep in the valleys of the iconoclastic Kootenays. Anyone fearless to attend can join. None of us read the same book (we're far too unruly for that); we present our well-thought out (or wacky) ideas on books written by authors that range from Terry Pratchett to George Eliot; discuss the aliens, explorers, repressed Victorian ladies, drug addicts, and off-beat characters that appear on the pages; argue, interrupt each other, laugh, shout; borrow each other's books; sprinkle crumbs and spill coffee on the host's rug (which usually is no stranger to crumbs and coffee anyhow). We troop out the door, minds on fire with new thoughts and new ideas, and carry on to one of the town's restaurants for lunch. Waitresses cringe and patrons look up in alarm. There we continue to harangue, enlighten, and laugh with and at each other, the conversation usually switching between books and films, -- and occasionally -- our own lives. Let Random House or anyone else try to control us -- I think not!

Barbara MacPherson
Nakusp, B.C.