My Year of Book Clubs with Strangers

I have “events planner” in my real-life job title, so the last year has been quiet for me. After I laid myself off in March 2020, like many people I started looking for POSITIVE ways to fill my time. (This was after a few weeks of watching the news too much and cleaning every inch of my house.) I noticed more and more public libraries moving their book clubs online so I signed up for one. The meeting was so fun and the book so good. A whole hour of book chat and I didn’t think of impending doom once, amazing! After that, I was hooked, and started signing up for as many meetings as I could manage, often in towns I’ve never set foot it in.

One thing that really struck me during this year, The Book Clubs With Strangers Year, is how events in the news were filtering through so many book discussions and how that helped us to process what was going on. In a lot of ways, dealing with that constant cloud of 2020/2021 doom and gloom was actually welcome when done in a group setting. Discussing even the direst issue as a group, if seen through the lens of just one book, was more manageable than trying to wrap my head around it alone, staring out the window. Meetings for books like Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkle and The Lost Man by Jane Harper made us talk about isolation and aloneness and talking to yourself. Books by Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ijeoma Oluo were all hyper relevant for issues of racial inequality. Trusting and not trusting your neighbors were the themes that punched out of my mini unit on occupied France during WWII. Caroline Moorehead, Irene Nemirovsky, and Sonia Purnell all made me think deeply about how crisis often brings out a new side in people you thought you knew. (The state I live in had/has very loosy-goosy covid prevention mandates. Is everyone in my community willing to make an effort to protect each other? This year has taught me that there are plenty of us that just don’t care.) Lastly, I arm chair traveled a lot this year. My favorite travel memoir was Anthony Doerr’s from his year in Rome with his young family (and writer’s block). That writer’s block was over a book which would, a decade later, become the beloved best seller we all dream of having. I write this line with hysterical, hopeful wistfulness.

Over all, I think from March to March I went to about 40-45 book clubs. Best idea I ever had. During the weirdest year ever.