Publishers and Chat Rooms Boost Thriving Book Clubs

Leafing through a notebook jammed with jottings, names and numbers, Virginia Valentine scrunches her forehead as she searches. The book, stuffed with wedges of paper and dogeared Post-it notes, is a living document that traces the vitality of the great American pastime: reading. Valentine’s notebook charts the social vehicle partly responsible for that reading boom: book groups.

It is Valentine’s job to come to the aid of the more than 400 book clubs registered with the Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of the nation’s most prominent independent booksellers and whose two locations are Denver institutions. Book clubs like those here have been popping up and thriving around the country, in the process helping to spike the sale of popular fiction.

“It all started slowly at first,” Valentine said. “In 1990, I had contact with about 50 people, and I thought that was an enormous figure. Somehow, it’s gotten to this point.” She waved her notebook as evidence of perhaps the nation’s most clubby bookstore.

Indeed, the evidence is everywhere that book clubs are blossoming. Hoping to cash in on this, publishers are providing reading guides free to booksellers and book groups. The Internet is alive with online groups and chat rooms dedicated to books.

Valentine, compact and energetic, has been a fiction buyer at the Tattered Cover since 1986, but the management of book groups has since engulfed her time. She offers one-stop shopping for the groups: offering seminars on book clubs, advice about formats and suggestions on books and discussion points.

Diverse and Eclectic

The groups are diverse and eclectic: Some are couples only, some forbid couples. There are mother-daughter clubs; there are groups of attorneys and African American women; there is the Go On Girl! Book Club, with 400 members and 32 chapters around the country.

Food and drink is often a central motif, as for the East Coast club called Mostly We Eat. This sensibility, purists sniff, relegates the literary to a position of lesser importance than the culinary.

“We always eat,” affirmed Leslie Good, whose group of women from her church meets once a month. Hers is a familiar book group scenario: plates perched on knees, a wide-ranging discussion of the current book, the hostess selecting the next month’s book.

Offers a Challenge

Tracey Campbell has been part of a Denver club for about a year and says it offers stimulation and challenge not available elsewhere. Also, as a single mother with two young children, there is the matter of yearning to speak with others above a “Sesame Street” level.

Good, a librarian, says the social interaction keeps the group together but is not the driving force. “It does two things for me: It gives me a chance to socialize with a group of people I enjoy, but it also motivates me to set aside time to read something. Because I know I have a deadline for the club, I pick it up and keep plowing.”

The discipline imposed by the meetings is often a feature of club dynamics. Some members are shunned if they come to a meeting having failed to finish the book. Others say there is pressure to read books on a different level, recognizing that each metaphor and theme will be dissected.

Too, personal opinions are sometimes pounced upon, and the verbally meek can be overwhelmed. Because of such friction, now there are even professional book club facilitators. The Chicago-based Assn. of Book Group Readers and Leaders helps clubs get in touch with local facilitators, who, for a fee, will referee, guide or even help root out the inevitable troublemakers.

The hot titles, Valentine said, are usually culled from bestseller lists and follow a surprising pack mentality. Favorite selections of late include “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” by Rebecca Wells, “The Reader” by Bernhard Schlink and “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Popular fiction is the most widely read genre.

“One of the most beautiful things about the book group is its simplicity,” said Campbell. “This is not high-tech. It’s simple. You read. You relate to others. It’s a good thing.”