How My Book Club Has Deepened My Friendships
My high school friends and I remained close after high school and college. It is a gift to have friends who have shared so many lived experiences and who have known and loved you through so many different stages of life. That being said, many of us had become more acquaintances than friends by the time we formed our book club in January 2020. We had moved all over the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia suburbs for those of you reading who are not local), we were busy building our careers, and some of us had begun to start our families.
As our lives and schedules got busier, we had moved away from our initial book club to monthly wine and cheese get togethers. I will be forever grateful to my friend Katie for sending out that first email suggesting we get back to discussing literature together. The response was clear—we wanted more great literature in our lives.
I sometimes see a connection between reading great books and praying. Like anything else we choose to do in life, both take time. Both can seem frivolous or like a waste of time if you don’t look closely. I understand where people are coming from when they say Who has time for that? But those same people are missing something deeper and essential to both reading and prayer. Learning to read and pray deeply will open up your mind to see your life and your world in a different way. Choosing to spend your free time this way will help you grow in ways you never expected, and you might just find that the more you do it you more you realize you never want to be without this gift again.
We’ve all seen the signs in classrooms and libraries—reading can take you to another world. The surprising part is that you may be reading a book that seems set in your own neighborhood and family that STILL takes you to another world because you learn to see your own world from a fresh perspective. I love learning the kinds of books my friends enjoy reading so that I can think deeply about recommendations they would enjoy. Similarly, I love when it is my turn to make three suggestions for our monthly book choice.
Our rules are simple. We flexibly rotate through who chooses our three suggestions, everyone votes for the one they’d like to read the most, and the book with the most votes wins. Whoever made the suggestions is also responsible for leading the conversation when we meet. Through the pandemic, we moved to a virtual book club that meets after all the kids are in bed. High school friends who have moved to other cities are now able to join us. We do occasionally still hold in person, traditional book club meetings, but we have generally found that the post-bed time virtual meetings work great for everyone.
As the way we meet has evolved, the essence of our book club has remained the same. We are together during that time to discuss great literature. Despite the fact that we all attended the same all-girls Catholic high school, we bring a plethora of ideologies and perspectives to each book we read. These differences in beliefs together with our confidence in our respect for each other have enabled us to have conversations that might otherwise be tense or difficult month after month. Our relationships are built on years of shared experiences and friendship, but life has shaped each of us into our own person. I love my book club so much because of the questions we pose to one another in our discussions. We challenge each other’s beliefs—both about the novel at hand and life in general—and that is exactly what makes our book club exciting and our friendships deeper.
Were we to continue meeting monthly for wine and cheese without the basis of literature for discussion, we would most likely continue to have surface level conversations with one another. It would be very strange to show up at a wine and cheese party and ask your friends things like What are some examples you see in your own life of authority figures abusing their power? or Has anyone thought about the way war shapes everything it touches—even those who remain at home in relative peace? At book club, these kinds of questions are par for the course. Reading and discussing literature with my friends has not only broadened my own perspectives on the world. It has invited me into the world as my friends see it, and for that I will be forever grateful.
