Book Club Post - My Nonfiction Book Club Experience

Searching for a book club to attend in my small neck of the woods of east central Illinois proved daunting, but I located one about 30 minutes away in Effingham. The public library there partners with a local business, Fresh Digs, to host and promote a nonfiction book club that has been ongoing for over two years now. I registered online to attend the book club but didn’t have time to read the book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, so I was prepared to observe and take in all the nuances of the process.


When I arrived at Fresh Digs, a gift shop with eclectic and vintage fare that also hosts arts and crafting events, I was greeted warmly by the owner and pointed to the back room where the book club would be meeting. The back room was small, decorated with various works of vintage needle-point, and set-up with a circle of mismatched chairs and a 1960s couch around a low coffee table. In short, it was perfect. Johnna, from the Effingham library, was there talking to a few early participants. She had already spread out new, nonfiction possibilities for their upcoming April meeting and was showing them off.

In all, 13 participants arrived to take part in the book club. The age range was roughly 25 to 75. All but one of the participants was female, and they all appeared to be regulars. Everyone was on time, and a few people brought snacks to share including a bottle of wine (although I don’t recall the wine making it my direction!) Johnna opened the group by asking “What did we all think of the book?” This would be the last question she asked for the full hour of discussion!

The group was like a well-oiled machine. Nobody monopolized the conversation, they paused for each other, deferred to each other, and allowed everyone to speak. Everyone actively participated, though some more than others. One participant, whom I will call Kate, was particularly knowledgeable in the subject area (true crime) and had done research on the author and the follow-up to the now famous case. Due to her wealth of knowledge, she ended up speaking the most. Other participants appeared to welcome Kate’s sharing of knowledge which made me think about the unique nature of having a non-fiction book club, namely that there are facts involved not just feelings or opinions about the book.  Because their book for this session was a true crime book that involves the author’s obsession with finding The Golden State Killer, there were a lot of details that participants wanted to discuss (and Kate had most of the in-depth knowledge needed to expound on the book’s findings). 

Two things should be noted about this book that make it unique:

1. The author, Michelle McNamara died in 2016, prior to the publication of the book. In fact, it was finished by someone else, and McNamara’s husband, Patton Oswalt, helped see the project through to publication in February 2018.
2. Two months after the book was published, in April 2018, the killer was identified and arrested.

Not all of the book club participants were aware of the significant advances in the case that took place after the book’s publication. One of the participants proclaimed “How do you know all of this? I take three newspapers and didn’t read about this!” Kate, of course, follows Patton Oswalt on Twitter and has seen him perform live, so her knowledge of the situation far surpassed those who either didn’t know or had only briefly seen an online news piece.


Even without leading questions from their facilitator, this group covered more topics regarding the book itself than I expected. They talked about the storyline and how it jumped around quite a bit. One participant had listed to the audiobook on a long drive, and she noted how difficult it was to follow in the audio format. Other participants felt that it read like fiction even though it was part memoir. More than one person agreed that the book had surprisingly good “closure” despite the fact that it had to be finished by another author and ended prior to the investigation’s culmination. One participant noted that there was “just a lot going on” in the book.

Two participants discussed their interest in true crime and revealed that they each had grown up near the site of a murder investigation. From those experiences they became curious and also felt the need to seek more information as a way to deal with their fear. One participant noted that she read In Cold Blood by Capote at an early age and that started her interest in the genre. Another person admitted that she had judged the others in group when they chose this as their February book because she thought it would be too gruesome. She ended up reading it anyway and now feels badly for judging them.

The group began to suggest true crime audiobooks and also podcasts such as My Favorite Murder that others might enjoy if they like the true crime genre. (At this point, the woman with all the newspapers was a little flummoxed. “What is a podcast? How do I even do that?” A young woman next to her showed her the podcast app on her iPhone, to which she replied “I don’t have a smart phone!”) I was reminded that Dunneback and Towner define integrated readers’ advisory as “a way of providing advisory services… that includes all different formats and media while staying focused around a genre” (2010, xii). Truthfully, this group was performing some serious integrated RA and tech literacy for each other.


At this point in the book club, I had a few reflections that I took note of:

1. Johnna did not need to ask questions to keep the discussion going, re-route the discussion, or otherwise aid in the facilitation of the group. “Starting a Book Club” has a great deal of ideas for those looking to facilitate a book discussion, but Johnna didn’t need any of them. My experiences with facilitating book clubs is limited to middle grade elementary school students and a few church groups that my mother wrangled me into. With those groups, I always started with an ice breaker of some sort. “Starting a Book Club” recommends using an ice breaker to “loosen you up and get your discussion off to an enthusiastic start” which I think is good advice, but it was not necessary with this group.
2. It dawned on me that some patrons come into these types of groups (and the library in general) with a great deal of knowledge. Kate was brimming with information about the book, the author, the criminal case, and even the author’s former husband. She added a great deal to the conversation. Goldstein notes that booksellers have encountered a phenomenon among readers where they are more knowledgeable and enthusiastic than ever before. Goldstein quotes Jane Glaser, a book group coordinator for Henry Schwartz Booksellers, as saying “They could do my job. It’s scary. They know what’s coming out on the fall list before I do” (2005, p. 32).

Clearly, most groups will need more facilitation than this group required. I would never enter a book club as a facilitator without, at minimum, a list of questions. I don’t know that I would ever ask a participant to support their views with a passage from the text as suggested in “Starting a Book Club”, but I would not approach the task empty handed. I suspect that Johnna knows this group so well that she doesn’t need to prep too much for the actual discussions with them.

Their final task of the evening was to choose their book for April. Among the possibilities proposed by Johnna: Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte, and The Greatest Love Story Ever Told: An Oral History by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. She had these three on hand to pass around the circle. The group also mentioned that in past months they talked about reading Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. Several people noted that they couldn’t handle another “heavy” or “difficult” topic right away even if they would be ok with it in the future. They didn’t take an actual vote (although Johnna told me that they often do), but it was fairly unanimous that the Mullally and Offerman book would be the “lightest” and the most “not bummer” choice, as several participants deemed it. Comedy it is for April!

In all, this was an absolutely delightful group that I may well join for future sessions, and Fresh Digs is worth the 30 minute trip for shopping and browsing on its own!



References


Dunneback, K. & Towner, M. W. (2010). Introduction: Integrated Advisory. In Integrated Advisory Service. Denver: Libraries Unlimited, pp. xi-xvi.


Goldstein, Bill. (2005). Reads Well with Others. Publisher's Weekly, 252(21), 30-34. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.


Starting a Book Club. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ilovelibraries.org/booklovers/bookclub