MOllie Dunn has always been wanted to join a book club. Until last winter, the twenty-five-year-old was too busy or distracted to find the right person. The opportunity to start her own business came when she took a new job as a sales associate at BMV, a bookstore in Toronto. With her manager's permission, she set an opening date and posted an announcement on the store's Instagram page. The question was: Is anyone coming?
Her manager had stipulated that there must be a minimum of four people at the event, and Dunn was already wondering if she'd have to call on friends to fill the seats. One problem was the weather: the first meeting was scheduled to take place on a Tuesday in late February. The city was still recovering from the effects of the winter storm, and the snow on the slippery sidewalks was barely cleared. Then came the idea of book clubs as old-fashioned, something older people would gather in a country house, rather than events where young people could mingle with strangers.
In the end, seventeen people attended the event, much more than Dunn expected, and a good start to a new type of event at the store. According to Dunn, subsequent meetings will consistently attract twenty to twenty-five guests (although no recent events have been scheduled since Dunn received his master's degree). I was one of the participants in the first meeting. I overcame my own anxiety and found myself in a place where I knew no one, but I was comforted by Dunn's excitement and the smell of books.
I walked up to Dunn and saw that she was setting out plates of cheese, crackers and donuts, as well as coffee and tea – it was clear that she had gone above and beyond. Then I walked over to one of the sofas, looking around in disbelief at the number of people who had appeared. There was twenty-three-year-old Naoufel Ahmed, who grew up in the Middle East, where he had difficulty finding book clubs that sold English books. Then came thirty-six-year-old Natalia Buya, a longtime reader who was glad to be in the same room with people who shared the same interests. Twenty-nine-year-old Sarah Pereira was looking forward to the meeting because most of her friends don't read. We were going to discuss Ocean Vuong's debut novel. On Earth we are briefly magnificent.
According to Canadian Leisure and Reading StudyThe number of young people joining book clubs has been steadily increasing over the past few years. We're in “book club season,” said Claire Foster, manager of Toronto's Type Books on Queen Street. But this new wave of meetings is different from previous ones. “Whenever you think of book clubs—at least I did when I was growing up—like when you saw book clubs in the media, you think of these old white women drinking wine,” says Iman Ahmednur, co-founder of We're Not Strangers, a social club that hosts a book club regularly. What makes We're Not Strangers feel different is their use of unique themes, like a Galentine's themed book club. The co-founders are also focused on choosing books that are popular in the online space, Ahmednur says.
We Are Not Strangers isn't the only book club aimed at a younger audience; many modern book clubs there seem to be niche topics. For example, at the Toronto Silent Book Club, visitors gather in cafes and pubs to read quietly in a group. Queen Books' Growing Pains Book Club is for those fifteen years of age and older who want to read outside of the young adult section during the summer. Wine About Books runs several book clubs, including a romance club and a cookbook club. And while it's true that many of these in-person meetings feature high-profile releases that are widely discussed on BookTok and other online spaces, they also feel like a long-overdue protest against talking about books only behind a screen.
Talthough it's difficult track what the first online book club in North America was, many publications and scientists attribute popularization of online book communities for Oprah. In 1996, the talk show host founded Oprah's Book Club, a television book discussion group that worked until 2010. Although readers used mailing lists, message boards and chats To promote a shared love of books, online groups specifically dedicated to reading began to appear more frequently after Oprah started her book club.
I met twenty-seven-year-old Shizza Khan at a BMV event. Knowing that she didn't live in the city center and had to travel over an hour to get there, I was curious what made her decide to join. “My book club is online,” she said. “So, there’s not a lot of socializing outside of the book club, and I was really looking forward to meeting people in Toronto.”
In my conversations with other participants, one word kept coming up: community. Some mentioned feeling lonely or isolated in Toronto, while others expressed a desire to “get out of the house,” but it all seemed to lead to a desire for connection. Even though we were in book club, the meeting was not necessarily dedicated to a specific text for many readers; rather, it was an opportunity to use one's passion or interest as a means of social connection. Book clubs are also unique in their ability to attract the attention of even the most introverted participants. For example, making friends at the gym or at a work-related event can be difficult because there is no specific topic of conversation. Book clubs that are moderated and dedicated to discussing specific readings can relieve some of the pressure.
Stefania Kuczynski, a University of Toronto iSchool master's student majoring in library and information science, raised a similar question. She believes that book clubs are primarily about building community because “you Really I want to talk only about books or do you want to talk about books with other people? she asked.
Mmeeting new people is one of the reasons why people in Toronto join social events; finding a partner is another. Recently there has been an increase in the number of Toronto residents. joining running clubs as a new way of dating and, it would seem, participation in personal dating events.
When I asked Foster, founder of the book club Type Books, if she thought people attend book clubs for this reason, she thought about my question for a moment and then replied, “Not ours.” I suspect she may be right, at least when it comes to heterosexual encounters. Perhaps this is because the idea of book clubs as “female effort“still persists. Rachele Abbasinejad, book club coordinator at Queen Books in Toronto, told me that the average store meeting attracts four to five male regulars, compared with ten to fifteen women, although it depends on the book. “Serious” or political books tend to attract more men,” she says.
However, this is not the case for all Toronto book clubs. Aaron Kane, librarian at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library, says their popular Dystopia book club is “worth[s] because of the number of men we attract.” When I asked him why he thought that, he said it was “probably” because of the book genre, which “has historically been more of a male-oriented or male-dominated field,” but ultimately he's not sure. (The club is currently on hiatus while Cain takes a break after more than four years running it.)
My own book club was full of women. For example, of the seventeen people who attended the BMV meeting, only three were men. And in some ways, my interest in talking to other people about books has added new layers of connection with my existing girlfriends.
While I was working on this story, I often told my friends anecdotes about what I encountered when I learned about these book clubs around the city. In one of these conversations, a friend waited until I finished and then casually told me that she was thinking about starting her own book club. Her remark took me by surprise; I didn't realize that this trend had spread to my own social circles. She told me she wanted to start a club called Ferrante Fanatics. Four of her friends read Elena Ferrante after she persistently begged them to do so, and separately came to talk with her about books. “I [thought]we operate as a loose book club, why don’t I formalize it?”
Even though I had read Ferrante's book before and didn't like it, somehow I wanted to join the club. Even if it meant potentially rereading a work I didn't enjoy, I found knowing that I would be able to discuss the book with the group after felt worth it.
