For the love of books: Book clubs enjoying resurgence
Emma Johnston, left, of Hickory and Nancy Marshall, of Cecil, are two of the longest-serving members of Heritage Public Library’s book club, founded in 2000. The duo curates a varied book list and leads lively discussions inside the library every month.
Photos: Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
The Andrew Carnegie Free Library in Carnegie hosts a senior book club every month for older adults to exchange ideas and socialize. Folks are welcome to arrive early or stay late and lose themselves in the wonderful world of library books.
Photos: Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
There’s a club for readers of every genre. Local libraries host monthly book clubs whose lists include everything from thrillers to historical nonfiction to magical realism.
Evening falls and sunset fades, but inside the Eva K. Bowlby Library, men and women gather for illuminating discussion during Book Club, held the second Thursday of each month.
“Almost everybody in our book club is a great book lover. At the same time, they want to socialize,” said Dottie Doman, who coordinates the monthly meetings. “We have about 15 members. We’re all kind of friends by now. From 4:30 to 5 we have a social hour where we just talk, catch up with people, then we start discussing the book from 5 to 6.”
During Book Club, folks ranging in age from early 30s to 50-plus share their favorite passages, wonder aloud about plot devices and get to the heart of a book – or try to, at least. While discussions can get heated, they remain polite because, above all else, the group is a collection of book lovers in the company of others as passionate as they about turning pages and drinking in ideas.
“We all want to share our views and our sort of emotions that come out of reading books,” Doman said.
Doman curates the reading list – she’s got titles planned through August – and the Eva K. Bowlby Library orders copies through the Waggin inter-library network.
There’s no genre theme to the Eva K. Bowlby Book Club.
“We’re very eclectic about what we read,” Doman said. “We’ve read books about giraffes, we’ve read books about the Dust Bowl, we’ve read books about Hitler’s Germany. It’s a way to get some exposure to things you wouldn’t normally have read.”
Exposure to new ideas is the tie that binds 21st century book clubs to gatherings of yore. The book club’s origin story is as lovely as a classic, and begins in the 1600s, when women gathered after church to discuss that day’s sermon or the Bible.
As men’s philosophy and science clubs gained steam in the late 18th century – Benjamin Franklin founded the literary society Junto in 1727 – women sought spaces in which to share their own ideas on politics, morals and current events.
Hannah Adams, America’s first working female author, joined a reading circle in Medfield, Mass., in the late 1760s. Ladies read and discussed belles lettres, or aesthetic essays, on literary and art criticism, and shared and critiqued their own writings.
Those ladies clubs changed with the times, and book clubs have surged in popularity over the last decade. Most everyone has heard of Oprah’s Book Club; in the last few years, celebrity readers like Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Emma Roberts have launched their own groups.
Sure, pop culture oft portrays book clubs as a group of wine-drinking women discussing life and literature with a side of charcuterie, but in actuality, most local book clubs are structured similarly to the one at Bowlby.
Folks gather every week at Bethel Park Public Library for one of five monthly themed book clubs, most established in 2018, when circulation supervisor Michele Loria sought to fill a void within the community.
“We saw people on Facebook posting, looking for a local book club. We decided we were going to start one here,” said Loria, who leads the Monday Evening Book Club on the last Monday of the month. “We’ve got a diverse group in there of ages. We range from early 20s up to 70, 80. We read a wide range, (but) we seem to be heavy on thriller or mystery. Fluffy books don’t really lend themselves to a discussion.”
Loria or another facilitator leads discussion in the cozy fireplace room, where members ponder questions while enjoying snacks (“Snacks are very important,” Loria laughed). While mostly upbeat, book talks sometimes dive into darker waters.
“The Immortalists, that was a book about four siblings. They went to a fortune teller and they told them when they were going to die. We talked about, would you want to know?” Loria said.
Book club drew larger groups before COVID, and though Bethel Park’s clubs continued meeting over Zoom, membership did drop.
“All five book clubs are very popular and have gained members since lifting COVID restrictions,” Rob Kalchthaler, head of adult services, said in an email. “The average number of attendees is approximately ten members per group. It seems that many of our groups and clubs have gone up in number since lifting restrictions. I think patrons were more than ready to leave the house and try something new! After those months of being isolated, I like to think they discovered the library’s many offerings while looking to get out and back into the world!”
Books are incredibly important to the six women who make up Heritage Public Library’s club. Every month, ladies from McDonald and surrounding areas gather for stimulating conversation led by Emma Johnston and Nancy Marshall.
Johnston is the longest-serving member of this iteration of the library’s book club, founded in 2000.
“I have 18 years of pages of the books we’ve read,” said Johnston, of Hickory. “When I first started we didn’t keep a list. Within two years, we started.”
Together with Marshall, Johnston curates the year’s reading list, making sure to include a wide variety, from historical nonfiction to hard-hitting fiction. One thing you won’t find a lot of on the reading list: classics.
“It’s amazing the controversy that classics can bring,” said Marshall, who fondly recalls losing herself in books at her family’s summer home in Cecil, where she now lives.
It’s also amazing how enlightening book discussions are.
“The really wonderful thing, to me, about being in a book club, you form wonderful friendships, but there are any number of times that I haven’t really caught on to the point of the book. So often, just the comments during a discussion can really bring a book to life,” said Marshall.
“Sometimes you want to read the book over again after,” Johnston added with a laugh.
The women who make up Heritage Public Library’s book club not only read and discuss books, but they travel together, too.
“We’ve read a lot of books and then, if we can, go visit those places,” Johnston said. “We read ‘Loving Frank’ and we went to see Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. ‘Meet You in Hell,’ that’s Carnegie and Frick, so we went in to the Frick Mansion.”
Book club offers women the opportunity to get out of the house, socialize and learn, and while Marshall does allow for conversation during club, she tries to keep everyone on task.
“I permit personal conversations to go on for just a certain length of time, and then I pick up the book. It really is easy to drift away from the book,” Marshall laughed.
Discussing works of literature, she said, “keeps us mentally fit.”
The Heritage library club invites women of all ages to join in their tradition. This particular club is a living example of ladies circles blooming into modern literary ones; the original Free Library in McDonald established a Woman’s Club in 1908, said Heritage Library director Nikki Sarchet.
“It’s wonderful that they’re keeping that alive,” Sarchet said. “We’re hoping to do some different age ranges. We have a lot of other reading programs, but not specifically reading clubs. They’re our superstars.”
The superstars, the voracious readers, the deep thinkers and the social bookworms at all area libraries look forward to diving into their next title, which will be discussed at March book club meetings throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.
It appears no matter how society impacts the way writers write, or what publishers publish, bibliophiles will continue reading and discussing classics and new releases with others.
“As many books as there are, we have that many desires to keep on going and reading books,” said Doman. “I think the future of our book club is very bright.”
To join a local book club, visit your library’s website, give them a call or stop in for more information.