Books can wreck you. Books can fix you. Books can make you feel smarter than everyone in your life. Books can humble you in what you think you know. They question your attention span while you reread the same sentence five times in a row. But maybe the best thing about books? They give us a reason to gather.

You read something weird, emotional, horny, or shocking and suddenly you need to talk about it. What makes a fandom real? A group of people who care and a place to show up and talk about it. And I believe that fans turn into huge fans when there’s space to connect beyond the original source of their fandom. Enter: the book club. Let’s talk about it.

Salt makes food taste more like itself. And I think book clubs are salt to both community and the books themselves. I sat down to chat with @likedmindedbookstagram who said it well, “You can be a fan as a solo activity. But it will, at some point, require you to engage with another person. I really do believe that. There's something about when you love something and it moves you, you just have to share it. Where you think, ‘I would enjoy this more with someone else who also enjoys it.’”

@leannevon.creates, who is a part of a book club and a cookbook club, shared, “There was a time in my life where casual community felt impossible.” The clubs that she’s a part of provide something that sit between “catch-up friendships” or hangouts that feel over-engineered.

After a week of chats and interviews, I was pretty impressed that there seemed to be no specific winner* in terms of how a book club should actually meet and discuss. Here’s a short list of where book clubs can be hosted:

*I do feel strongly that a book club operates well when it’s clear who is hosting and has some general consistency (when you meet, what you read, and expectations around how casual or formal it’s supposed to be).

Scholar Henry Jenkins once wrote, “Fans reject the basic relationship that is set up by the industry. They're always trying to push beyond the basic exchange of money. The entertainment industry is a tool or mechanism for fandom, but it's not what fandom is. Fans intuitively understand the difference between the official product and their highly personal use of it.”

I chatted with Drew, who attends an LGBTQ+ book club at a local bookstore, said the shop doesn’t even require you to buy the book directly from them. Hardly any of the book club hosts or attendees I chatted with exchanged money to be a part of their club. I think this is crucial and something that the strongest fandoms possess: the deprioritization of commerce and a full embrace of community and ownership.

Every single person I chatted with shared that, because of their book club(s), they ended up reading something that they would normally avoid reading. In our two-hour chat, @likedmindedbookstagram said something that I really loved: “Recommendations should be a love language.” We talked about how intimate and special it is to meet someone, get to know them, and then suggest a book. Whether you’re the host of the club or it’s your turn in the rotation, you have a lot of power to introduce an entirely new world or genre to those in your group. 

And in case you were curious, here’s a list of books that fell into the “I would never had read this had it not been for my book club” category:

Whether your book club meets in a group chat or at a wine bar, once a week or once a quarter, it’s a reminder that reading doesn’t need to stay a solo activity. It’s a way to connect.

Because fandom feels better together. And book clubs are one of its finest forms.

Throughout my book club conversations, I discovered a lot of book-related resources and links. I had to share: