Having recently joined my first face-to-face (as opposed to online) book group, I thought it worth attending yesterday's session on book groups at the Chiswick Book Festival.
The 60-minute session, chaired by Celia Brayfield, and featuring novelist Amanda Lees and three local book club members, was supposed to discuss "which books are most popular with local book clubs and which work best" but it ended up turning into a wide and varied discussion on lots of things relating to book groups.
For instance, did you know some book groups have very tight rules on membership? I was mildly alarmed to find some do not allow men to join! Apparently the reasoning is that men read very different books to women (not something to which I entirely agree) and might actually dominate the conversation!? Admittedly, the people in attendance were of the "older persuasion", should we say, and largely looked like "ladies who lunch", so maybe that might explain the reverse sexism, but I did think it highly unusual.
Other book groups read more than one book at a time. One of the panelists explained that her group, which meets every six weeks, reads three books. Another explained that she knows of a group that reads two books at a time, which share themes or are linked in some way -- for instance, Henry James' The Aspern Papers and Colm Toibin's The Master (which is based on James' life). It all sounded a bit too much like hard work to me.
No-one really spoke about the ways in which books are selected, although one chap in the audience said his group did it by consensus, but Amanda Lees did stress it was important to choose books that are often neglected or overlooked, to find the "nuggets" and "gems" that don't get reviewed in the papers or promoted in the shops.
"How do you do that?" one audience member asked.
The answer: peruse the shelves (NOT the 2 for 3 tables), visit charity shops, oh, and try the internet, particularly book blogs!
(Sadly, I didn't wholly agree with Lees' view that all the reviews on book blogs are free from marketing spin, but at least she championed book blogs as a a great resource to find unusual books, albeit most of the people in the audience looked a bit technophobic!)
As to the books that make good book club choices, well, it came as no surprise that it's the books which generate discussion that work best. According to the panelists, the following books have gone down a treat with their various groups:
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach
Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father
Rohan Mistry's A Fine Balance
Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne
Other suggestions welcome!
