BYOB Book Club

 

The book club that I attended was a Bring Your Own Book book club held at a nearby library. As the title suggests, there’s no one assigned read that attendees come prepared with. Instead of a traditional book club, those taking part simply share their most recent read and talk about the books they’re interested in. There are some suggested reads listed on the library’s event page, such as It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover and Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, if patrons are having trouble picking a book to start with. Despite working with people all the time, I’m a little more reserved in my personal time and took more of an observer role in this club, although I had just read Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again and was prepared to talk a little about it if necessary. I was also attending with my aunt, who is a huge reader and an even bigger talker. She was reading a whole collection of Pride and Prejudice spin-offs.

This club meets once a month and the regular attendees are a fairly set group of mostly women than come to talk about their most recent reads. There were eleven of us at the book club, held at 5pm on a Thursday and led by one of the library clerks. I was a little apprehensive heading into the group, as this is not something I would normally do, but there was a lot of effort made by the library to make the place welcoming. There were cookies set out on a plate, along with little bottles of water and the moderating librarian was greeting folks as they came into the meeting room. We sat around a big conference-like table facing each other, we were all given a quick introduction of the BYOB book club, then she turned things over to us by asking us to go around the room with introductions and what we had just read. The conversion then went around in a sort of popcorn fashion, jumping around with whoever had something to say.

Most of the conversation was had by six folks who seemed to be both regulars and friends, and they sort of took hold of the conversation once things got started, although not in a negative or exclusive way. It’s clear that these individuals come every month to talk about their favorite books and share recommendations. Again, they were not unwelcoming and would have been a great group of folks to talk to during the gentle reads module of this course. Someone was reading Colleen Hoover’s Verity, there was Mary Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society (my recommendation of The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan was a success to that person), and a Jack Reacher book I didn’t catch the name of, among a couple others. There were also a couple of younger people who came together and had both read Frank Herbert’s Dune in preparation for seeing the second film. They talked a fair bit and added on to conversations as well. The moderator did a really good job of prompting questions if necessary, and in a way that made her seemed equally engaged in what everyone had to say, regardless of person or genre. A few of the attendees had a lot to say, my aunt being one certainly, but the librarian wasn’t afraid to step in to re-frame conversation to include others as well. 

I love the idea of a Bring Your Own Book club and I am looking to get one started with a group of friends, but I think it attracts a specific type of person at a public library. It can be a little off-putting to more socially anxious folks looking to jump into a book club, which was my personal experience with this. I recognize that this isn’t an exercise in our own personal book club feelings, but I do think that it’s important to keep all personality types in mind with your programming. A shier newcomer might find a BYOB book club a little too open-ended than a straightforward book club where everyone has the same book prepared. I’m also only mentioning this because the library I attended does not have another traditional book club as an option, though I recognize that these BYOBs may be a little easier to prepare for. This is all to say that I do love these book clubs in theory but I am a little intimidated by them in practice until I can really start to feel comfortable in the group. I’m also right in the middle of ready Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, so maybe I had a warped set of expectations to begin with.