Book Clubs

By Debby Giusti

Today’s the first day of summer so grab a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, take your tablet or laptop outside to soak up the sunshine and join me in talking about one of my favorite subjects—book clubs! If you love to read, analyze characters and discuss theme, moral premise, symbolism or motifs, you’re probably in a book club. If not, you need to be.

My Book Club! We've been meeting for over a decade.

Oprah Winfrey is often credited with the rise in popularity of book clubs. The talk show hostess started her own television book club in 1996 and encouraged women to read books she chose, beginning with the club’s first read, The Deep End of the Ocean, by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Oprah picks invariably soared to the top of the bestseller charts, and even classics, such as John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, gained a new resurgence of notoriety due to what has been called the Oprah Phenomenon. Over a span of fifteen years, members read a total of 70 books until the club ended in 2011.

This great group of ladies hosted me at their first
blook club meeting. They started out with four
people. Now they have more than a dozen members.
Everyone wants to be part of their group.
Carroll Pelligrinelli, second from left, is a Villager!

Pamela Burger, in her article, “Women's Groups and the Rise of the Book Club," claims that women’s clubs in vogue in the late 19^th century--when ladies gathered to discuss literature and the arts--actually gave birth to the concept of the modern book club.

Katie Vu goes back even farther. In her article, “The Book Club Phenomena,” Ku attributes the beginning of book clubs to Puritan Anne Hutchinson, who first gathered women into a reading circle in 1634. Margaret Fuller supposedly sponsored the first bookstore based club in 1840. Some sixty years later, avid readers received selections in the mail thanks to the Book-of-the-Month-Club and The Literary Guild.

Our read this particular month was Kristin Hannah's
The Nightingale.

Today virtual book clubs abound. Word of mouth book promotion has turned digital with readers sharing information online about authors and their books. Goodreads provides a forum for its more than 20 million members to discuss and review their favorite reads. Facebook reading groups interact with authors and discuss their stories in a number of forums, including Q & As and author chats.

Schools, libraries and even communities host monthly reads with such programs as One City, One Book that started in Seattle in 1998. The National Endowment for the Arts sponsors The Big Read, and since its kickoff in 2006, more than $18 million in grants have been given to fund reading events across the country.

Inevitably, everyone congregates in the kitchen!

No matter how or when they started, books clubs seem to be a permanent part of our American culture. In 2014, BookBrowse interviewed women who read more than one book a month and found that 56% were members of book clubs. The majority of clubs—89%--meet in person and read an average of 9 to 12 books each year. The books are selected from various genres with the classics and bestsellers being the most frequently chosen as monthly picks.

L to R: Sandy Marvin, my daughter Mary and Sandra
Kirkpatrick chat before our book discussion.

The book club in which I’m a member started more than a decade ago with a church retreat. After the weekend religious gathering, many of us wanted to continue to meet monthly. We started reading inspirational non-fiction but quickly evolved into a fiction reading group. The second Wednesday of each month finds us gathered in one of the member’s homes. The evening begins with appetizers and beverages as we socialize for an hour or so. The hostess provides a light dinner or heavy hors d’oeuvres and dessert.  After eating, we turn our focus to the monthly read. Questions in the back of the book sometimes provide a springboard for our discussions, and it’s rare that a story doesn’t leave us with a thoughtful insight or takeaway that we can apply to our daily lives. At the end of the evening, the hostess announces the next month’s read. Each December, we have a book exchange with the January selection chosen from one of the gift books.

Great discussion at our May meeting.

Four Basic Steps to Form a Book Club:

1. Choose a book to read.

2. Meet with friends, food optional.

3. Discuss the book.

4. Select a story to read and discuss at the next gathering.

I enjoy visiting book clubs and greatly appreciate having my story selected as their monthly read. The conversation flows, and book club members invariably have questions about where I get my ideas and who creates the cover art and the back of the book blurb. In addition to answering their questions, I also provide a behind the scenes look at publishing and the writing life. 

Shelba Jean Carroll won my gift basket
the month my book, Plain Truth, was
her book club's selection.. 

I asked the Seekers to share their book club experiences and received the following input:

Sandra Leesmith was invited to a luncheon hosted by a book club that read her book, Price of Victory (Montlake publication). What interested her the most were the questions asked about things in the book she wasn’t even aware were there. She deduced that since readers bring in their own experiences, they relate to the plot and characters in relation to their own lives.

Janet Dean recounts this lovely story:

“I’ve spoken to several book clubs. All have been gracious and fun. They had read my book and were eager to discuss it. Some even asked me to bring other books to sell. But it was my first book club encounter that blew me away. Members had read my debut Courting Miss Adelaide and had prepared the dinner Adelaide served Charles. They had decorated the living room with hats and gloves in honor of my milliner heroine. Their efforts touched my heart. Plus the meal was delicious. Afterward the discussion of the book was lively. One member questioned Adelaide’s refusal to accept Charles’s proposal. Others jumped right in to support her decision, saying Charles had not yet returned to God, and Adelaide knew Charles wouldn’t find peace until he came to terms with his past. It was my first experience of readers defending my character’s action for me."

Mary Connealy had this to offer:

“I was told a book club somewhere far off, like Seattle, was reading my book and asked me to send book marks or such things. Which I did. Then they invited me to Skype into the book club. I said no because I just didn't know how. Then on the day and hour of the book club, I happened to be looking on my laptop at Facebook and here's this post from the lady in charge of the book club saying, "We're doing it now, live! Stop in." Not aimed at me but at her Facebook friends. So I clicked on a link to find out more, and BAM, I'm at the book club. My face is on their laptop right in the center of the ladies. Well, I was NOT camera ready. My goodness, was my hair even brushed? So I clicked on the camera icon to cut off my picture, but I stayed on and talked to them. I could see them, they just couldn't see me. It was fun and so unplanned that I didn't have time to worry about it.”

Missy shares information about her own book club:

“I belonged to a book club before we moved last year. We had a small group of women in our church who often shared about good books we'd read and finally decided to form a book club. We met monthly at a member's home. We took turns picking a book for the month, and read from several different genres. We often used the discussion questions in the back of the book, but usually ended up off topic pretty quickly. :) When life got crazy (several had young children in sports), we just got together for a movie and dinner and discussed the movie (which was actually based on a book in a series we had loved). So there's a lot of flexibility for a group of readers who love talking about stories!”

Now it’s your turn. Tell us about your book club or any reading programs with which you’ve been involved. Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for the first book in my Amish Protectors series, Amish Refuge, along with a two-in-one that features Plain Danger, from my Military Investigations series, and The Shepherd’s Bride, by Patricia Davids. The winners will also receive a copy of The Reader’s Prayer.

Happy reading!

Wishing you abundant blessings!

Debby Giusti

www.DebbyGiusti.com

AMISH REFUGE

By Debby Giusti

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Miriam Miller barely escapes the ruthless attacker that killed her mother and kidnapped her sister. Running deeper into the woods, she’s running out of hope…until she falls into the arms of an unlikely bodyguard—a peaceful Amish farmer. Something about Abram Zook inspires her trust, but even in bucolic Willkommen, Georgia, Miriam faces danger. Both from the men pursuing her and from her growing feelings for the caring—though guarded— widower who protects her. Because if she falls for Abram she’ll have to embrace his Amish faith as her own—or lose him. With each minute, her abductor creeps closer, pushing Miriam to an inevitable choice: stay and risk her heart…or leave and risk her life.

Order HERE!