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| Can you read our motto? We don't always finish the book, but we always finish the beer! |
My community book club meets for one hour in the card room of our activity center. As a result, it's not the most social of book clubs. There's definitely an opportunity to meet like-minded souls and socialize. But our time with our room is too short so we immediately get into business and start discussing the book. (My New Jersey book club, another serious book club, involved 45 minutes of eating snacks and drinking wine before we'd start our book discussion. We'd talk for about an hour and fifteen minutes about the book. Many of us would linger afterwards, helping to clean up, but as much to continue socializing.)
Books and Beer sounded like a book club that wouldn't take itself too seriously and would definitely include socializing. Oh, did I mention that it meets in the beer garden of an Irish Pub? But did I need another book club?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have less time to read now as a retiree than I had as a full-time fifth grade teacher so I was reluctant to join another book club. Until... Until I saw that they were going to be discussing Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as part of their Summer of Banned Books. Uncle Tom's Cabin! I'd been anxious to discuss that book with someone, anyone, since I'd completed reading it in 2008 or 2009.
The Civil War was part of our fifth grade curriculum in New Jersey. I'd been teaching about Uncle Tom's Cabin without having read it for the first 5 or 6 years that I was telling students all about Harriet Beecher Stowe, why she wrote the book, how it was interpreted by both sides, and what Abraham Lincoln thought about it. Sometime around 2006, I thought that I should take the time to read the book. Actually, I think it was seeing the Uncle Tom portion of the King and I in a high school musical that made me think this was a book I needed to read.
I got very bogged down in the dialect the first time I attempted to read the book. I think I got up to about page 73 before I put down the book. I picked it up several months later, couldn't remember what I'd already read so started from the beginning. And again I had trouble with the dialect. I decided this might be a book that was better appreciated as an audio book. It was going to take a staggering 16 hours to listen to the book. Okay, I'd listened to books nearly that long before. At the time, I was doing plenty of driving. I had the time to invest.
I found it much easier to listen to the dialect than to read it. After I can't remember how many hours of listening, I found that I was able to pick up the book and read more - at home in bed, during my DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time at work and then get back to listening when I was in the car. I was enthralled with the story. It brought my teaching about the book to a whole different level. But other than my students, no one wanted to talk to me about it! I went as far as suggesting it to my book club. They weren't interested.
I surveyed friends. "Who's read Uncle Tom's Cabin?" I was disappointed to learn that at least at that time, no one I knew had read the book. So to discover a book club - at an Irish pub - that an acquaintance of mine belonged to that was going to be discussing Uncle Tom's Cabin, this was all the push I needed to show up at a book club meeting.
I hoped this was going to be a serious book club and more about the books than the beer. It's that ... and more. Since joining Books and Beer Club, I've read more classics and more books outside my comfort zone than I have read in any other similar 3 year period, including years when most of my reading was devoted to my academic pursuits. The members of the book club are smart, articulate and interesting. They're real readers.
The format of the meetings is lovely, too. We arrive at the pub sometime between 6:30 and 7:00pm and get comfortable. We find a seat, purchase our beer (or drink of choice) and then settle in. Just at 7:00pm, we begin our discussion. We start with a survey of thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways to see who liked the book, who hated the book and who was in between. The discussion starts normally by hearing from those in the minority when the surveying is done. We discuss the book for a little over an hour. Then we break to get a second drink - or simply to take a break. We come back and finish up our discussion of the month's book. Then we throw out suggestions of titles for the following month. A majority rules and the next book is selected. Some people are quick to leave at this point. Others linger for more drink or more socializing. As I said, lovely.
Back to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Understand, I now live in the south. I can hear you thinking, "Florida, the south? Hmmph!" Well, in Florida, the south is the north and the north is the south. In other words, south Florida has adapted many similarities to northern cultures while my part of Florida maintains many strongly southern sentiments. I wondered what I was getting into. The first question I asked my new book club, right after we gave a thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways about the book was, "Who has lived their whole life in the south?" Many hands went up. One woman questioned why it mattered.
Did it matter? No. And yes. It didn't matter because I was finally discussing a book I'd long wanted to discuss. It did matter because most of the readers had life experiences that greatly differed from mine. Their takes on lots of the situations in the book were vastly opposed to mine. The discussion was great. I was impressed with the book club. I was hooked. The beer wasn't too shabby either!
Since joining this club, the only other book where I felt the north/south experiences made us perceive a book differently was The Catcher in the Rye. The southerners viewed Holden Caulfield as a very highly exaggerated caricature. I found him just a slightly exaggerated version of a rich, entitled New York City child going to a private prep school in the country. Okay, a troubled, rich, entitled New York City child going to a private prep school in the country. That difference certainly made for a lively discussion!
While my community book club is struggling to come up with a good system to decide what books to read when and to have the titles scheduled several months in advance, Books and Beer Club has its own method which seems to be working. Each month during the year is assigned a genre. A title is decided upon at the end of a meeting for the following month. We are asked to come prepared each month with our suggestions for the Books and Beer Club to read for the following month.
In case you're wondering, our genres are as follows:
- January - Florida author or story
- February - Biography, autobiography or memoir
- March - Fantasy
- April - Sci-fi
- May - Mystery
- June - Non-fiction
- July - Romance
- August - Comedy
- September - Banned book
- October - Horror
- November - Inspriration
- December - Classic
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