Books on Tap

I attended the Books on Tap book club.  This is a Fishers Library book club that reads contemporary fiction and meets once monthly, on Wednesdays (usually the 3^rd Wednesday, but was the 4^th this month) at 7:00, at local bars and restaurants.  The library purchases appetizers and patrons are responsible for the cost of any drinks or other food.  I attended the book club on Wednesday February 24^th at the Stacked Pickle at Allisonville and 116^th St. in Fishers.  We read Me Before You Jo Jo Moyes.

                The library had reserved a back room in the bar and there was a long table set up with chairs around it and a table in the front for appetizers.  There were 12 people attending and two Adult Services Librarians from the Fishers library.  Eight people were probably 55 or older, 2 people around 40-50, and 2 people were 30 or younger.  3 of the 12 were men.    First, everyone got their appetizers and then we started the book discussion.  First, one of the librarians asked what everyone thought of the book.  Most people enjoyed it, a few didn’t and a couple people stated they hadn’t read it.  In a later discussion with the librarians, this appears to a common scenario for the book club.  There are a couple of people who attend for social reasons and just come and eat snacks and talk, without ever reading the book.  It is very frustrating because sometimes these same people dominate the discussion and they can’t discuss the book, because they didn’t read it.  The librarians have discussed ways to deal with this problem and after discussing it with the deputy director, said in upcoming book clubs the will stop them and tell them that we are discussing the book first and will discuss other items at the end of the book discussion. 

                One of the main issues in the book is assisted suicide and we were discussing if it was selfish of one of the characters to choose suicide over his relationships with his family (I’m not giving anything away here, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t).  People had differing opinions on this issue.  Then, one of the nonreaders started relating it to nursing homes and how elderly people are treated when they get older.  One of the main characters in the book is a 30-year old paraplegic so it was somewhat related but they kept talking about this issue for over ten minutes.  The librarians tried to bring the conversation back around to the book, but it just continued.  One of the ladies sitting near me said that if they don’t stop talking about nursing homes, she was going to leave.  The frustrating thing is that if she had read the book, she could compare how what happened in the book compares to the nursing home situation but since she hadn’t read the her contributions to the conversation only concerned her opinion on nursing homes.  The librarians also stated that some people come for a month or two but never come back but the nonreaders come consistently.  The librarians feel like they might be driving people who actually would like to discuss the book away.  I would say 70% of the time we were actually talking about the book, it just seemed like there were large sections of time when they conversation really strayed from the book. 

                We also talked about characters.  Here people had really strong opinions.  One person said that one of the main characters, Will, who was the paraplegic character, was the most evil person in any of the books they had read in this book club so far.  Which was the exact opposite of what I thought.  This provoked a lot of discussion and we also talked about what Will’s life would have been like if he hadn’t have been involved in an accident.  We discussed how Will’s tragic accident and his relationship with Lou had changed the person he was and enhanced his empathy.

                All in all, I really enjoyed the book club.  It didn’t really bother me personally that some people hadn’t read the book or that they discussed other things for part of the time.  As long as we can circle back around to the book and spend most of the time discussing that, I am happy.  However, it was frustrating to others and I do think that it is insensitive to the feeling of others to come to a book club without reading the book and expect to contribute to the conversation.  At other library book clubs I have attended in the past, a regular or first time attendee might mention they hadn’t been able to read the book, but would listen and not monopolize the conversation.