To start, we chose Emma at random little did we know, it’s challenging and not well loved. (We also bought Jane Austen for Dummies, to be thorough.) So we formed a book club around her novels, calling it Becoming Jane Austen. We took an online quiz about her works and failed miserably.
That’s when we realized we actually knew nothing about Jane Austen. We met up to discuss it, talking about our own admiration of Jane: Tea parties! Movies starring handsome British men! I loved the book, which is about an Austen obsessive, and yakked about it, and lent it to friends who loved it, too. It was a novel, Austenland, by Shannon Hale, which he’d bought after seeing me watch dozens of Jane Austen adaptations over the years. In 2007, my husband and I were driving to Santa Cruz, California, for our 30th anniversary (we planned to go on the roller coaster there 30 times) when I opened his gift. One club’s giddy, decade-long ride on the Jane Austen train. Who knows the plot twists that might ensue? Follow them into imagined worlds-and stick by them in this one as well. It may take a try or two, but don’t give up if you keep looking, you’ll find your people.
If you’re reading this, you may well belong to a book club yourself. How often in life do we get the chance to respectfully disagree-let alone do so over a cheese plate-and then cheerfully say, “This was fun, see you next month!”? What are relationships built on if not empathy? Reading- sharing-reading seems to prime our brain for friendship, for tolerance, for understanding. When we talk about characters, we debate what we’d do in their shoes, and in this way, we may actually-quantifiably!-be increasing our empathy. I believe we have our book club to thank. We lend outfits for weddings, show up for funerals, godparent one another’s children. So in good times and bad, we lean on each other.
When you’ve lived through love, loss, pain, rage, death, grief, and impossible joy with a steadfast group of sympathetic souls-no matter that the drama happened only on the page-you are bound together. What are relationships built on if not empathy?īut our closeness isn’t all about the books. There was the one where I hatedĪll the books, the one where I loved the books but hated that nobody actually talked about them, the one where I showed up late to my first meeting and received passive-aggressive emails from its president forever after. I’d dropped out of three book clubs before this. Little wonder, then, that I leave my book club’s meetings feeling like I’ve been plugged into a power outlet, my mind humming with energy and ideas-and my now-fuller heart just as abuzz. But it’s what happens after I read that’s changed my life: the talk I have with a person I’ve lent a book to, whose connection to it tells me something about who they are the kinship with other readers who loved the story and the delight of occupying its world with them. I’ve devoured books since I was a kid, and many have changed my views. Join us as we explore a fellowship that can be profound beyond words. But book clubs also increase our compassion, strengthen our connection to the world around us, and maybe even keep us in shape. Sure, they foster friendships (and a certain amount of wine consumption).
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