How Book Clubs Changed The Way I Read
I am a selfish reader. I have never been good at reading what others recommend to me or following tastes other than my own. Part of this stems from my firm belief that the right book will arrive to me at the right time; I have always been able to pick up the exact right story to soothe my heart and guide me forward.
During the lonely months of the pandemic, though, I joined three virtual book clubs to find community. Reading books chosen by other people was initially uncomfortable for me. Many of the titles were books that I had heard of, but deemed too sad, too real, too close to my personal experience for me to feel enthusiastic enough to read. My personal reading taste tends toward the fantastic, the romantic, the speculative. But after a few meetings, the feeling of rightness came to me — I was reading exactly what I needed to be reading, even if I hadn’t chosen the titles.
The first book club I joined is the Proud Asian Womxn Book Club, a community of women and gender non-conforming people of API heritage. The book club focuses on books by Asians and Asian-Americans, and gosh, are some of the stories sad. Reading the books in community with other Asian-identified people made the experience meaningful, however; rather than sitting alone with my feelings and touchpoints of trauma, other Asian people reflected that experience back with me. I was never alone in the complications and questions. I don’t think I spoke for the first few meetings, but now, I feel settled into this group of caring people genuinely in search of what it means to be Asian in America.
As we read together, I realized that the book club was creating its own canon. In my English Literature courses, when we referenced the “literary canon,” we meant something overwhelmingly white, male, and elite. Stories that everyone was supposed to know because they shaped our understanding of the world and tapped the human experience in such a way that the stories became referential, in conversation with each other across time: Shakespeare in conversation with Dickens in conversation with Steinbeck. But this book club was building a canon of Asian and Asian-American works — to not just read them, but to talk about them alongside each other.
We read Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong first, which led into Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which led into On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and now tailing into The Leavers by Lisa Ko and on and on. These are all very different books — a book of essays that leaned academic, a generational epic novel, a semi-autobiographical book of fiction clearly written by a poet, and a fiction novel. The authors so far are Korean American, Vietnamese American, and Chinese American. The Asian diaspora is so wide, and so far the books have primarily touched on the East Asian diaspora, but I’m excited for us to read even more broadly.
Each meeting is dedicated to one specific book, but a strange thing started happening — discussions of one book began to bleed into other meetings. People put Pachinko in conversation with Minor Feelings, and Minor Feelings in conversation with On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. We would talk about the movie Minari or a Nike commercial produced in Korea and share personal stories, all tied to our experience of the books. The references built to create a common story, an Asian-American story where we saw and were seen by the work we were reading.
That was when I realized the magic of an identity-focused book club. Because we all shared the reference point of the books, we could build something new from them. We were weaving a new story from the books we read and the stories shared by members. In this book club, Asian people were in conversation with Asian people and shaping a deeper understanding of the human experience from it — a canon of our own.
The second book club I joined is an entirely different experience. The Romance Book Club run by Word Bookstore in Brooklyn is bound by a love of the genre, not identity. Since the group meets once a month, everyone still feels like a stranger to me and I have yet to say a word to any of them, but I’m excited to attend more meetings. So far, none of these books are talking to each other in the same way the booklist of the Proud Asian Womxn Book Club is, but are more broadly in conversation with the entire romance genre.
What makes this book club meaningful to me is the refreshing treatment of romance novels as… well, books. There is so much stigma and shame around reading romance novels. Stereotypes of heaving bosoms, gratuitous sex, and reading only in secret are what I know. The reading public does not treat romance novels as literature. Romance novels are considered “trashy” or “smutty” or simply, “not smart.” I was reading a romance novel with a woman in a corset on the cover once and got a lot of looks on the bus. But romance is a billion dollar industry — clearly, people are reading it, and people are being paid to write it. To continue to be dismissive of the genre and malign the quality is pure ignorance, at this point. Romance novels are novels, with great writing and engaging stories. I’ll save the rest of my rant about how the romance genre deserves more respect for another blog post, since I meant to only talk about book clubs…
The Romance Book Club is full of razor sharp minds who are read widely and deeply in the genre, able to call up multiple examples of texts based on what we read. They live and breathe into the genre, with their own common language of tropes, happily ever after vs. happy for now, and sub-genres. I thought I was well-read in romance until I attended this book club!
This book club felt the most like an English class, since the interest was in breaking down books to their working parts and drawing meaning from this analysis. When I was first considering joining a book club, I was nervous that the assigned reading and discussion would feel like class — I have always been too competitive, too focused on generating witty analysis and garnering praise, to listen and be a good conversationist in a class setting.
But I found myself soaking it all in. I felt so affirmed by how much they cared about the text and how seriously they treated the story. Even the discussions about sex scenes came from a place of joy, not shame. It was considered natural, expected, and an important part of the narrative to move the plot along. The academic-level analysis came from a place of love, not criticism.
As someone writing a romance novel, this book club made me so excited. To think of readers, gathered in small rooms across the country (via Zoom, in this instance) to earnestly and passionately discuss how meaningful it is to find love and how reading certain characters falling in love made them feel seen and possible —I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.
I mentioned that I joined three book clubs during the pandemic, but I won’t discuss the third since I won’t be going back. I’m not naming names, because I’m sure it is a meaningful experience for its members, but it wasn’t my vibe. And that’s okay! I wanted to add this note, so if this post inspires you to join a book club, you keep searching if the first one isn’t the right fit. The right book club is waiting for you! It may just be a Goldilocks situation — try a few to find the right fit.
The most important thing I’ve learned from joining book clubs is that it means joining a community. A book club is as much about the people as it is about the books. For me, the two book clubs that I’ve found have changed the way I read. Reading has become a community experience, rather than a solitary one. These book clubs have taught me to unlearn the competitiveness and self-important analysis I developed in college. Now, I’m working toward a community-centered vision of what books and reading can be. Intentional reading alongside others feels more and more like a revolutionary, community-building activity of shared awareness. The more stories we can read and share, the wider we can build our world.
