The 800-page gamble | Lessons from joining a small-town book club (in my 50s)

What happens when an introverted fiction lover joins a small-town book club made up of three different generations? Slight intimidation followed by personal growth, literary "sidequests," and the joy of stepping outside your comfort zone. Here’s what joining a book club in my 50s has taught me about reading, community, and the art of ‘reading a room.’

Four months ago, I joined a book club in our small town. There were just five of us - an eclectic, "hotchpotch" group gathered together. If you analysed the dynamics of this little circle, the only obvious commonality you’d find is our love of reading. 

Our band of bibliophiles spans ages 48 to 76, bringing decades of wildly different reading experiences to the party. With representatives from the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Generation X, there is no shortage of disparate life experiences and opinions.

Our backgrounds and reading habits are equally mixed.

There’s the speech-and-drama teacher-cum-poet whose literary DNA is linked to a heavyweight South African author and activist. There's an ex-university librarian and former bookshop owner, an ex-teacher turned freelance content writer and blogger (that's me), a well-travelled raw honey supplier with her honeycomb van, and a retired HR manager turned antique dealer, who happens to be the only gentleman in the room. (For any novelist out there, this is the perfect plot seed for a small-town whodunnit.)

Our book club also puts to rest Elizabeth Berg's observation that she has “not been in a book club where there were any men, and… had not, in fact, heard of book groups that were mixed.”

Overcoming "TBR" intimidation

Unsurprisingly, our reading tastes are worlds apart. At our inaugural meeting - which mirrored the plot of Sophie Green's The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club - we were tasked with bringing five books from our own shelves to share. Any genre.

I quickly realised I was alone in my preferences for historical fiction, contemporary drama, cozy crime, literary fiction (Fredrik Backman topping my list), and Jane Austen classics. 

As the other members pulled out modern classics, Dickens, South African biographies, political fiction, and selected non-fiction by authors I’d never even heard of, a wave of intimidation washed over me. “Maybe this isn't the club for me,” I thought.

“Wearing a giant, oversized scarf will make you look deeply intelligent in almost any situation, but especially a book club.” (I will definitely keep that in mind, Sarah Cooper.)

But then, over cheese, biscuits, and sweet homemade iced tea, I was handed The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim - another author completely new to me - with the assurance that I would love it.

Being the people-pleaser I am, I gave it a whirl.

And honestly? I was left completely undone. I didn't just love it; I gushed. It perfectly proved Emma Thompson’s point that “books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them."

The soft skills of reading together

Four months in, we’ve recruited a new member, and the club has fast become a highlight of my monthly social calendar. But it's more than just a few hours chatting enthusiastically (and sometimes heatedly) about books. 

It has quietly challenged me in ways I didn't expect.

My desire to please others has been tempered. I’ve achieved a new level of agency by allowing myself to say "no" to a book and be okay with it. I’m more empowered to take reading risks, knowing that reading is deeply personal. We won't all love the same things, and that's fine. 

But when you do find someone who shares your passion for a specific book - like Virginia Evans' The Correspondent - that "me too!" moment creates an immediate, satisfying sense of camaraderie.

It has also honed my soft skill of "reading a room." When someone vocally tears down a book you absolutely loved, defensive sparks can fly. As an immersive reader, you become fiercely protective of characters you've invested in. Book clubs require you to step back and gently respect those differences.

As Bell Hooks beautifully noted, a book club transforms the solitary act of reading into "the path to communion and community.”

I have been introduced to new authors. Elizabeth von Arnim is just one of these, making her way into my growing library, right next to my proud collection of Jane Austen's novels. 

Sidequests and massive tomes

Beyond our monthly meetings, this little group has taken me on unexpected bookish adventures:

• Book vs. Movie | When our local cinema screened Hamnet, we all read (or reread) Maggie O’Farrell's novel before attending Wednesday movie night. Our next get-together yielded a lively debate. Most preferred the book, one thought the book and movie were on par, and one wasn’t partial to either.

• The Road Trip | A few of us travelled to the Hermanus Fynarts Festival for a panel discussion on book clubs, facilitated by Bongani Kona. Listening to the founders of the Cape Town Silent Book Club, The Mother City Book Club, the Good Book Appreciation Society, and The Non-Fiction Book Club Podcast on the different types of book clubs, their origin stories, and each one's unique highs, lows, challenges, and surprises was fascinating.  

  
  

  I also attended the official Silent Reading Book Club Chapter event hosted by Hemingway’s Bookshop at Only Specials Café, surrounded by strangers who oddly felt like comfortable bookish companions.

• The 800-Page Challenge | We decided that a couple of times a year, we’ll all read the same book. After submitting suggestions - with the only proviso that none of us had read the book - our shortlist came down to Middlemarch by George Eliot or The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This was a weighty dilemma. One is regarded as the greatest novel in the English Language (according to The Guardian). The other is the 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Both are over 800 pages! (Clearly, we have some overachievers in our ensemble). 🤦🏻‍♀️

  
  

  The winner was The Goldfinch—partly because it was easy to source second-hand, and we’ve wisely given ourselves a two-to-three-month grace period to finish the tome.

A new way of looking at books

Since joining the book club, I’ve become a more focused book ‘collector’. Our antique dealer might raise a British eyebrow at my use of the term, but I use it loosely to describe scouring independent book shops with a more curated, intentional eye.

Visiting second-hand bookshops now means doing double duty: finding my own reads, and hunting for treasures I know my club members are looking for. Just the other day, I sent a WhatsApp message from a shop in Franschhoek: “These Virago Classics are at the 2nd bookshop, each at R30. Is your bookshelf missing any of them?”

Turns out that reading together changes the way you look at books, and at fellow readers.

“Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the centre of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.” Yann Martel.

I certainly didn't expect a small-town book club to broaden my reading life quite this much. 

So, if you've been contemplating joining a book club - or starting one yourself - I can recommend it. Just be prepared to have your TBR list explode, your opinions challenged, and your second-hand shopping habits completely compromised. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I’m only on page 212 of Donna Tartt’s 864-page novel, and also have a giant, oversized scarf to find before our next meeting.

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Written by Leanne Johnson