Book clubs: Keziah Frost asks are you in one?

HALLIE EPHRON: These days I love talking to book clubs. I mean, these people who actually read my book! Such a precious thing.

Back in the day,  I was in a book club. These were serious readers and I slogged through a lot of books I'd never otherwise have read. As you might imagine, this was a good thing and a bad thing. Inevitably, as I got busier and started writing and reviewing, there were too many books and too little time.

I've missed it, so it's fun to hear from Keziah Frost about the amazing book club she started. And, by the way, her new novel, Getting Rid of Mabel. Classify it as... read on, it's a great new category that I'll be looking for.

KEZIAH FROST: Book clubs seem to be everywhere now. While they say this is an age of loneliness, it’s also an age of finding new ways to connect.

Like the literary salons of yore, book clubs create a gathering place for people who want to react with others to the latest “great read.” Each book club has its own personality, its own vibe, to suit the members of that particular group.

There are book clubs that don’t discuss the book and are more wine-focused. Others discuss the book-of-the-month in great depth.

About four years ago, I got an idea for a book club after reading Marie Kondo’s The Magical Art of Tidying Up. I gathered all my 800 books in the living room, and I picked up each one, asking myself not “Is this a classic?” or “”Was this a gift?” or “Have I read this yet?”—but only the one clarifying question: “Does this spark joy?” By the end of the afternoon, I had 400 books going to Goodwill and 400 staying. I set the joy-sparking books in the book cases in new categories, giving one full shelf to novels in French.

I sat down to gaze at that shelf and felt the joy of seeing all those French novels side by side, and then asked myself: Why don’t I speak French more often, since French gives me joy? Why isn’t there a French book club around here? Why don’t I start one?

Four years later, our French book club is going strong, with six earnest members arriving at our monthly meeting with seriousness of purpose, copious notes, and a good store of wine, tea and biscuits.

I’ve visited several book clubs in my area to discuss my first novel, The Reluctant Fortune-Teller. It’s become one of my favorite author-ly things to do. There’s always a sense of warmth, often excitement, and sometimes even hilarity. And it is a wonderful, surreal experience for me to hear readers animatedly talking about my characters as if they are real people. I love it, because they are real people (in a way) to me, too.

As my second novel, Getting Rid of Mabel, hits the bookstores, I am getting more invitations to visit book clubs in the coming months. Those that are far away will be Skype visits. I’m looking forward to readers’ reflections and questions about Margaret Birch, eighty-seven years old, who learns to her horror that she has a double, a doppelganger, who has come to her town and is doing scandalous things. To add to the mayhem, a foster child “with behavior problems” is brought into the family circle. As Margaret and her friends deal with these two challenging strangers, comedy meshes with lessons learned.

Like The Reluctant Fortune-Teller, Getting Rid of Mabel is categorized as “up-lit.” Uplifting literature. Its purpose is to make the reader laugh, while also offering some things to think about.

And you, readers? What are your thoughts and experiences on book clubs?

And Reds, have you visited book clubs, and how does it feel to listen to readers discuss the characters who were born in your brain?

HALLIE: UP-LIT! I love it!! And it's exactly what the world needs now, that's for sure.

Are you in a book club? Have you been? And... how do you decide which books to toss and which to keep?

About Getting Rid of Mabel: Carlotta Moon, eighty-one years old, is the uncontested leader of Carlotta’s Club–and has been for as long as anyone can remember. Her loyal followers have always obediently thrown themselves into every new scheme she has ever proposed. Her most recent project was turning Norbert, a retired accountant, into a reluctant fortune-teller. Her ideas for future adventures are limitless, as is her confidence that her Club will always follow her.

Enter Mabel Paine.

For the first time, Carlotta finds an unlikely yet worthy opponent in a bizarre infiltrator. A stranger who bears an uncanny likeness to Carlotta’s oldest friend Margaret comes to town and threatens to hijack their Club. To add to the chaos, Carlotta’s niece brings an angry foster child “with behavior problems” into the family circle. To cope with both newcomers, Carlotta must learn her life lessons about love and belonging.

Getting Rid of Mabel follows the characters that first came to be in The Reluctant Fortune-Teller. Norbert Z is here again, playing a supporting role to his nemesis, Carlotta Moon.