Reading for Prizes
Why Reading in Community Is More of a Joy than a Burden, Even When I'm in Too Many Book Clubs
It’s the annual season when my earlier commitments come back to haunt me, when it’s time to deliver on all the things I said I would do with all the people I agreed to do them with.
Yes, that’s right, it’s book club season.
I have a bit of a problem in that I often start or join reading groups upon the thinnest of excuses. Where other people seem to have a reasonable calculus—“Can I complete the reading on time without major disruptions to my way of life?”—my thinking often runs “When will I have the opportunity to read this book with this group of people again?” My bias is against prudence and toward FOMO.
What this means in practice is that, right now, I’m working through the reading for the standing book club I’m part of (which I’ve written about before). There’s the group I’m reading Anna Karenina with because of an incautious bet with my college roommate. I’m reading for a retreat discussion this fall. I’m reading a book with my team at work. And when my workplace opened the opportunity for company-wide reading groups, what, was I supposed to say no?1
Yes, I realize, I probably should have said no—to one or more of these. Yes, I realize I have been here before, and yes, I realize I have no one to blame but myself. No, I know myself, and it’s probably too late for me to change, meaning there are likely to be more book club seasons in the future. And do I really want to change anyway?
But in this season of earmarked and concentrated reading time, which can feel like a burden, I need to be reminded…why am I doing this again?
Each year when our public library opens its summer reading program, I joke with my kids that now that it’s summertime, they’ll get to read for prizes. “And that’s why we read, right?”
The truth is, reading with other people already feels like reading for prizes.
Reading is a fairly solitary activity, and judging by the merch and memes surrounding book culture (things that extol staying in, canceling engagements, and just reading a book in one’s pajamas),2 readers like it that way. I mean, I’m an introvert, and I like it that way. Reading books in the physical company of other people often results in not reading.
Discussing books, however, is entirely different. I find that my enjoyment of a thing feels incomplete until I can put words to the experience. For years I wrote board game and book reviews for dubious rewards because nailing down my thinking made it feel worth it. And the best part was when I could draw others into the conversation, discovering whether we felt the same way about it, and why (or why not).
That’s the joy of reading in community. It’s the culmination of the reading experience. I know some will say that reading is a good in itself, and maybe it is, but to me what a person reads and how they read it and, perhaps most of all, with whom they read it are really what make the difference rather than the act itself. “Reading encourages empathy” is often trotted out as a reason why people should read fiction. This is a dubious claim to me, or at least incomplete. I’m sure reading can arouse an abstract feeling of empathy, but true empathy is not something that can remain abstract. Empathy must have flesh or it’s just a fleeting feeling.
To me, empathy is more likely to arise (or at least more likely to be fruitful) in discussing something with other people—an interaction that, instead of producing vague feelings that can trick us into thinking we’ve already done the hard work of loving other humans, forces us to contend with other minds that likely won’t be impressed by our platitudes or high mindedness. While discussions can turn hostile (the proverbial Thanksgiving table, a hotbed of religious and political sparring), entering a group with the expectation of generosity requires more of us than gesturing toward empathy in a secluded environment. Read fiction, by all means, but “let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”3 The reading itself, while not nothing, is also not everything.
Book club discussions are acts of hospitality. They are invitations to other people to share your life and thought, to think and feel with you for a time, and for you to think and feel with them. And this hospitality goes both ways. Just as you may bring a dish when someone invites you to a meal, so when you come to a discussion, you bring your insights. You bring your attention (no small gift in these times of Tiktok). You say to the others by your presence and preparation, “You matter. I am taking you seriously.” And just as at a meal dishes are passed, you wait to be served, and you remain in your seat until everyone is finished, so in a book club discussion ideally the participants make room for one another, hospitably allowing each other to speak rather than just waiting for their own turn to talk or checking out once they’ve had their say.
While it’s possible that some books will fit the moralistic vision of Miss Prism—“the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily”—most books worth reading produce a variety of opinions, because each of us brings a different background, perspective, or experience to a book. And even if the author’s moralism gestures at a Right way to read any given book, there is always the question of whether we agree with the author’s vision. Discussing books with other people is a reminder that there is not a single way to see the world. C. S. Lewis wrote, “My idea of God is not a divine idea.”4 There’s nothing like the presence of other human beings to help you realize how not divine your ideas are.
I recognize I’m romanticizing book clubs and reading groups. They’re not perfect, nor are they certain to arouse empathy or different views, nor are all actors within them at all times behaving well (including yours truly). I’m sure they can become echo chambers, too. I also recognize they are not the only things that foster this kind of discussion. But I think they are unique in the way they combine shared attention of a common object with commitment and the opportunity for long reflection.
This, at least, is why I keep coming back, why I have a hard time saying no, why the burden of commitment is worth the joy of discussion.
And if you disagree, I’d love to discuss it with you.
Reading
Surprisingly, despite the number of reading groups I’m currently in, I haven’t finished many books this summer, mostly because of budgeting my time among several at once. But my book club (…) recently read Whistler by Ann Patchett, and I thought it was excellent. Whistler tells the story of a woman who serendipitously reconnects late in life with the man who was temporarily her stepfather. (He and her mother were married for less than two years when she was around nine.) As they become reacquainted, old stories take on new meaning, and events that were never discussed provide fresh perspective on the characters’ lives. The main characters are an English teacher and a book editor, so it’s no surprise that the book touches on themes of storytelling, memory, and the way we (and others) present, edit, and renarrate the stories of our lives. Ann Patchett is a phenomenal writer. I would be hard-pressed to point to anything spectacular about her individual sentences, but she manages, without being showy, to convey pathos that doesn’t drift into sentimentality and to present layers of meaning in believable characters, all of which add up to a satisfying conclusion. Don’t be put off by the horse on the front (and back!) cover. This is worth reading.
Watching
Like many others, I shelled out the cash to see Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey (in IMAX, no less).5 The Odyssey is a book I return to often (I’m currently reading it aloud with my kids—does that count as another book club?), and my favorite movie is a retelling of the epic poem. But I mean it when I call it Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. While it shares many story beats with Homer’s poem, it feels like the (American) accents fall on different syllables. Nolan’s Odyssey may be situated in its ancient context, but it is no less a modern retelling than O Brother, Where Art Thou?. In Nolan’s telling, Odysseus isn’t kept from home by vengeful gods so much as by guilt over what he has done and his inability to protect his men from themselves. The movie is more agnostic about the gods than atheistic, allowing viewers to form their own interpretation of events. Still, it is a human story about what happens to people when they subvert the norms that make shared life possible, which is timely (if a little on the nose). In the book The Odyssey, most of what we learn about Odysseus’s journey is told through his own boasting in a bid for treasure, and we’re told (and shown) frequently that he is a liar and a trickster. So I’m okay with Nolan playing fast and loose in Homer’s sandbox, using his tools to fashion a new story from the old, even if it's a far cry from the world it pretends to depict. Emily Wilson (whose translation I’m reading for the first time) was savage in her review of the movie,6 but I feel about this review similar to how I feel when physicists and astronomers get upset with inaccuracies in Star Wars. She may be too close and know too much (certainly more than I do) to enjoy it. She criticizes Nolan’s action set pieces; I was impressed with his restraint. (If you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies, you are well aware of how an action sequence can overwhelm the story. Scylla might have taken up a whole hour instead of a minute or two.) Seeing The Odyssey in IMAX, rather than giving me a grander view of swords and spears, made me feel the vastness of the Mediterranean and opened more margin for reflection as I watched. If you, like me, are willing to let Nolan sing you a story (an anachronistic one, and a different one than Homer’s), you might be carried away by what you hear. I was.
Playing
War games are not typically my bag—I blame the many, many tears shed at playing Risk with older siblings—but the game I’ve played most in July is Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, which recreates the famous action setpiece from The Empire Strikes Back. Battle of Hoth is an asymmetric war game. Firepower is weighted in favor of the Empire, who has both more and stronger forces, while the beleaguered Rebels have superior positioning. The game uses Richard Borg’s card-driven “Command and Colors” system, which each turn involves playing a card that says which forces you can command and then moving and attacking with those forces. Battle of Hoth adds leader cards for some expected characters from Star Wars as well as linked scenarios that retell the story. I wasn’t sure about this one at first, but I’ve enjoyed playing this with my son (although he insists on being the Empire every game, so I haven’t been able to control those sweet, sweet AT-ATs). There’s dice rolling, as in Risk and other war games, which will put some off the strategic element in the game, but I find the dice add excitement more than frustration. (When you finally take down an AT-AT—no small feat, and a joy my son cannot know—cheering is an acceptable response.) This has been a fun game to play in the summer as we try to remember what cooler temperatures feel like.
Clicking
Jim Stump reflects on Pope Leo’s AI encyclical comparing the Tower of Babel and Nehemiah’s wall.
Derek Thompson interviews Laurie Santos on why men are so bad at making friends.
Andy Crouch on how coming back changes everything.
Daniel Silliman on the contingency of justice.
“The End of Reading Is Here.” I don’t always have the stomach for “we’re no longer reading!” jeremiads, but when I do, I read them in The Atlantic.
…And Chris Smith, of The Englewood Review of Books, wrote an excellent companion piece to it about how literacy survived the Dark Ages. Maybe book clubs can help us today?
Kate Shellnutt on why she hates when interviewees say “that’s such a good question.” (It signifies it’s usually not.)
I didn’t say no, but I did choose a short book, which feels like growth.
Interestingly enough, there is a board game about this very thing. In A Place for All My Books, players have to manage their social battery by doing actions around their apartment—sorting books, reading books, trying to clear a pathway through all their books—so they can regain enough energy to leave their home and…acquire more books.
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.
I mentioned to someone that I was seeing the movie in IMAX, and he excitedly said, “IMAX 70mm?” When I broke it to him that it was just regular IMAX, he looked disappointed. There’s always a bigger premium.
For a more charitable take, and also more along the lines I was thinking, David French’s column in The New York Times is good.