One of my favourite things, next to a Saturday morning with a National Post and a coffee, is a book club. I really like reading a common book and the informal conversations that happen as a result, on top of the more formal discussion that (sometimes) happens during a book club meeting.
The first book club that I was part of involved a loose group of anywhere from ten to twenty friends, depending on the book or the season. We were relaxed about our reading, meeting only after most of the members had either read the current book or else figured out that they would never read it anyway. We did try to celebrate what we were reading in some small way when we met: Indian dinner with Rohinton Mistry, Poe by flashlight at Hallowe’en. Great stuff.
Shortly after starting work at my current school, we started a staff book club. We’ve generally chosen three or four books for a season, with the hope that everyone would try to read at least one before our next meeting. My favourite thing about this club is the spontaneous conversation that happens in the hall around common fiction that we’re reading.
Student book clubs have been fun too, though they’re often in it for the pizza parties. Hey, anything that gets 17 year-olds reading Homer, Conrad, Dickens, and now Salinger. (Did they ever hate Dickens!)
Recently I watched The Jane Austen Book Club with my wife, and it prompted me to start yet another book club: the all-Shakespeare, all-the-time book club. So far there are three of us English teachers who are working our way through Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, setting ourselves the goal of meeting once a month to discuss them. Wrestling with the Bard’s words and meanings, I expect that our discussions will be more involved than those in the other book clubs, but, as usual, highly enjoyable.
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Photo by Ingorrr
