S2E2: The Social Life of Book Clubs

Summary Keywords 

Book clubs, shared reading, reading communities, bibliotherapy, social reading, online book clubs, silent reading, children’s book clubs, inclusive reading spaces, mental well-being, literary discussions, dialogue

00:02 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

Book clubs are a form of shared reading, where individuals come together to read aloud or silently and often to discuss books. A well-known mass marketed book club is Oprah’s book club that seeks to quote - “connect readers around a community of fellow bibliophiles”, unquote. Her picks are a way to market books and create conversation around topics of interest. Book clubs, however, are not a new phenomenon. In Denmark, book clubs grew out of the “people’s enlightenment” in the beginning of the 19th century. Ordinary folks met in local reading societies where they could borrow books and discuss the books with each other. Around the same time in the US, joining book clubs was a form of liberation for women who were meeting to expand their knowledge.  

In Singapore, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Malay community would pass the hardcopy newspaper around in village spaces or coffeeshops, and discuss social issues related to what they read. While the reading material was not a book, it was a form of shared reading. Today, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in book clubs in Singapore. A quick search of “book clubs” in Meet Up throws up titles such as “Singapore Books and Brews Meetup Group”, “Women in Business Book Club SG” and “Read-Aloud SG Book Club”. On Instagram, you can follow The Saturday Book Club, which focus on non-fiction and meets on the third of every month. The National Library Board website lists a number of book clubs in Singapore’s four official languages of English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.  

What exactly are book clubs? And why are people joining them? In this episode of How We Read, we find out more. 

Chapter One: Talking about books  

When I think about book clubs, the first person that comes to mind is Myra Garces-Bascal. Myra is an Associate Professor at the United Arab Emirates University and founder of an online website, Gathering Books. She’s my former colleague at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, Myra is a bundle of energy, often seen lugging a suitcase full of picture books to her classes. During her time with us at NIE, Myra started an inter-departmental book club. We had colleagues from the humanities, psychology, English Language and Literature department, myself included, and we would take turns to choose a book which everyone would read to discuss during our monthly one-hour sessions in the NIE library. I enjoyed the books as well as the conversations, as they offered a respite from academic readings, and the work I had to do. Because of this book club, I read books that I might never have picked up on my own.

Myra is a serial book club creator and participant. 

03:02 Myra Garces-Bascal 

So this summer, I actually had five book clubs. The first one is the Emirates Literature Foundation Book Club, we meet once a month for this Emirates Literature Foundation Book Club. It's usually on a Thursday at 8pm in Dubai, so it's a little far from me. I have to be I have to factor that into my schedule, because it's like 90 minutes away from me one way, and another 90 minutes going back. So that's one of my book clubs. Another is like a rehash of our Gathering Readers book club at the NIE. It's open to all of our doctoral students and our faculty members who are also very much into books and into literature. So during the summer, the PhD students who are part of the Gathering Readers book club, selected from International Booker Prize, long listed titles for the year. So we read Lost On Me, by Veronica Raimo, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. And then I have my book club of two with my still 22-year-old college kid. So over the summer, we read Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, The Arsonist City by Hala Alyan, and Touch by Olaf Olafsson, which has been made into a film. So for this book club of two with my 22-year-old, we actually read aloud together. So I read one page and then Micah will read the other page, which is really fun... And then I have my online book club communities via Litsy. So in Litsy, we also have what is known as the Europa Collective Book Club. So we go through nominated titles published by Europa Editions. Right now, that's what I'm reading, Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre, because it's what's identified for December. And then what was intense during the summer was the camp Litsy 24, wherein we read two books a month from June until August. So I literally had to post its on the books to remind me of which book I need to prioritise for which month, because that is what we will be discussing online. And there are questions that are asked every week, you know, to discuss the books we have, like, a specific number of pages that we need to go through, so it's pretty intense. 

05:27 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

I asked Myra, why do people join book clubs? 

05:31 Myra Garces-Bascal 

I think it's really about that forming a reading community and finding your book tribe. I call it book tribe, or another term for it, would be finding book kindreds, people who love books as much as you do, who would then lead you to other books. I think one of the classic trait or characteristics of an avid bibliophile is that you have an insatiable appetite for reading and for books. So that makes you infinitely interested in knowing more about other titles that other fellow bibliophiles would then recommend to you based on what you are currently reading together. It's about being led to other titles when you're with a group of people who love books as much as you do, it's also about discovering something about the book that you've read that you haven't really discovered on your own as you were reading it, which forces you to revisit, like certain passages that you may have ignored previously. And your question actually led me to Elaine Castillo's collection of essays. It's called How to Read Now, and it's, I think a must read. She talked about reading for solidarity. So if I were to quote from her book, she said “I'm more interested in solidarity, even if I don't quite yet know myself what I mean by it. Just the feeling I get from it, the startling, quenching relief of it, the force of its surprise, like being loved.” That’s, basically, why people join book clubs. It's, it's that sensation of feeling seen, of not being invisible, of having that shared experience of falling in love with words. 

07:16 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

To test out Myra’s theory, we visit Bookworm Banter, a monthly book club session organised by Book Bar. Alex Chua, Book Bar's owner, was inspired by the concept of silent reading to start the monthly book club. For $20 you get a free drink, a $5 book voucher and to participate in the book club. 

07:39 Alex Chua 

Actually, it was from a news article in New York where we read about people doing this silent reading thing. So we were like, “oh, why don't we try it,” right? To help promote it, we will say, you get a free drink, we'll give you a discount on the books, you know, that sort of stuff. And we didn't know whether people will sign up. But actually, the first one that we did, we were full in 12 hours. 30 sign-ups in 12 hours, then we're like, “oh, wow.” Usually, we are full every month since we've done it. 

08:08 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

To fully experience Bookworm Banter, I sign up for the November 2024 session. In the evening, the shops at Duxton road are mostly closed, except for the food and beverage outlets. It's nice to walk up the dark passageway of shop houses and suddenly come upon a brightly lit book shop window. I find a seat, claim my drink, and start browsing. Standing at the shelves, one of the first-time participants told me he found out about the book club on Instagram and that he was hoping to jump start his reading habits with this visit. There is a lively buzz as the participants start arriving and chatting. I can't pass up the opportunity to use my voucher and end up getting The Kamogawa Food Detectives and its sequel, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes before I sit down with my matcha latte. Slightly past 7:30pm, a bell is rung. Alex reminds the participants to read silently, and the crowd slowly settles down to reading. One hour later, the bell is rung again, and participants are invited to start their discussions. I interrupt a few of the groups to ask people why they were spending Friday evening at Bookworm Banter. People look like they know each other, but as I find out, when asking questions, they're mostly strangers, united by their love for reading. 

09:36 Sarah 

Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm reading the Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. It's a fantasy mystery novel. This is my third time being in Book Banter, but I've been here for a few book launches by other authors whom I'm reading as well. I am the kind of introvert where social events really exhaust me, like mentally, but I find that if I'm with my people, the people who share my interests, and that happens to be reading, I don't get as exhausted as much. 

10:01 Wilson 

My name is Wilson. I'm actually reading a book that was translated. It's actually my second time here. The first time I came was two months ago. The first time I came is because I felt like I wanted to find more friends who read, because I feel I don't have enough friends who read. And interestingly, the first time I came, I got to know three other people, new friends, who enjoyed reading. We set up a telegram group, and we said, hey, let's meet again.  

10:25 Pooja 

My name is Pooja, and I'm reading What We Learned From Driving In The Winter by Carissa Foo. I've been here before, so this is my third time coming here. The first time it was…I was there with the group, and we were all talking about our reading habits and stuff. And it's quite interesting to see how different people read, what kind of books they like. And turns out, I actually met the editor of, I think, the Mekong Review, and another girl who was into super highbrow feminist books and stuff, and I'd never met anybody like that before. I mean, not in my own reading group, for sure. The second time I came here, I met these girls who are super into, like, cheesy romances. And that was also fun, because we were just discussing, like, what we like and don't like, and romcoms and all of that. So it was such a very two different ends of the spectrum. I plan on continue coming back and, yeah, just having different experiences each time.  

11:15 Katrina 

My name is Katrina. It is my first time in this book club. I'm currently reading the Boardroom Knockout by Aaron Low and I was introduced to this book club by my dear friend Pooja right here. So why I'm here is because I firstly, really love reading a lot, and reading is something that I do to de-stress. It's a hobby that you kind of do on your own, because you just combine yourself. So it's kind of nice to just talk to other people about what exactly you're reading. 

11:46 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

People join book clubs to meet like-minded people with different or similar tastes in books, to talk about books and to find new reads and new friends. It's a refreshing experience, and especially for these young working adults at Bookworm Banter, it's a space to distress. For those who haven't been reading for a while, the book club promises a new start.  

Chapter Two: Book clubs for children 

Book clubs are not just for adults. Ibrahim, the bookseller from Wardah Books, hosts the Pretzel Book Club for young readers aged 8 to 13.  

12:30 Ibrahim Tahir 

It’s for young independent readers, so upper primary, lower secondary. We're not sure whether we're going to follow up the children as they grow. We’ll probably do that, or we just stay at the upper primary, lower secondary thing. Or we create another book club and just follow them on, because it's kind of important to capture the readers at that age and not have them fall off the bandwagon. For the present book club, we give the children as much autonomy as possible in choosing the books and in leading the discussion. And interestingly, for this book club, we have good mix of children from the public schools as well as homeschooled children. So the dynamic is very different, because homeschooled readers tend to be more independent in the reading and they ask more questions. The kids from the public school have a different method to reading. So it's interesting to see that at work. 

13:26 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

While physical book clubs in cosy environments can facilitate intimate sharing, we now have the means to connect across online spaces. Gan Sujia, a PhD student at the National Institute of Education, examined how children respond to the reading of metafictive literature in online book club sessions for her PhD study. For her book club, 11-year-olds or primary five children from one government school read two books, The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket and The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch. They completed pre-reading journals and logged into the book club sessions after school from the comfort of their homes. I asked Suja about her study and what she found.  

14:09 Gan Sujia 

I was interested in exploring how students read and respond to different genres of books. Usually, when we think about reading, it's quite an isolated activity, right? We read the book, we start it alone, we finish it alone, and after that, we put it on our shelves. That pretty much wraps up the entire reading experience. But when you join a book club and you start to discuss and talk about the book that you have read, you also get to hear what other people think about the book, their opinions, or perhaps different aspects that they liked or disliked about the book, and that can differ from some of the things that you have picked up on. So I guess in that way, that social aspect, it extends your reading. 

14:48 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

For these book clubs that were held online using the Zoom platform, Sujia asked the students to prepare for the book club by writing down their reflections in a response journal, rather than testing their comprehension. These pre-reading activities were meant to help the students think about their responses to the book, ensuring a lively discussion during the book club.

15:09 Gan Sujia 

Some of the prompts that we gave them were questions like, “what did you like or dislike about the book,” or “what were some things that you might want to change about the story,” or “what's your favorite character,” for instance. So these are some of the prompts that help them to focus their thoughts. It was very beneficial for encouraging participation and discussion, especially for the quieter students who might not have the confidence to speak up or they might not how to initiate a dialogue or start a conversation from there. For instance, one student, she mentioned that she really liked that in one book, the female character was much stronger and braver than the male character, and that was actually a springboard that built into a discussion about gender equality. So these little things really ensured that the students felt supported in the book club environment, and also ensured that both the more outgoing ones as well as the quieter students, were included in the overall discussion.  

16:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

Well-planned and facilitated book clubs can open up spaces for students to have honest dialogue, learn about themselves and the world around them. One advantage of this online platform was that it emboldened students too shy to speak up in class to have their say in a smaller group. 

16:23 Gan Sujia 

During the book club session itself, one student actually mentioned that he really, really disliked one book. The reason why he disliked it was because he felt that it was very boring in terms of how the plot was progressing. Now, it's not always a bad thing when a student says that he dislikes a book, because we all have our own preferences, and actually learning how to articulate some of these reasons about why we prefer something over another is also a skill that needs to be cultivated. They were also starting to see that different individuals can have different thoughts and perspectives as well different likes and dislikes, and so learning from all these different multiple perspective is also one of the advantages of book clubs that can surface. Later on, I shared their responses with the teachers of the school where I hosted the book club. The teachers were actually surprised at some of these responses. They mentioned that there was a particular student who was really, really quiet in class. The teachers mentioned that have actually never really heard her voice before. But actually in the book club, she was very participative, she was very vocal as well, and some of her responses were really funny and insightful. So the teachers were really surprised by that, and they had a good laugh at some of her responses. But that's really interesting as well, and it does actually build on the research that shows that having these sort of informal discussions and conversations with others can also allow quieter students to find their own voice and also learn how to articulate some of their opinions as well. 

17:55 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

Chapter Three: Book clubs for well-being  

Reading is good for you, or so we have been told. But most times when we are told that by adults or teachers, what they really mean is that reading helps you to read better, which then helps you to learn better, which translates to better grades. But reading can be good for us in many more ways. Reading brings us to new worlds, helps us to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, allows us to imagine and to relax.  

18:39 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

At Wardah, the commitment to book clubs is a commitment to creating a social space for conversations around books and ideas. 

18:50 Ibrahim Tahir 

It's not for commercial purpose, because our book clubs average about 15 people, 10 people. It doesn't move the needle when you're talking about book sales, but we feel that it's part of our overall purpose, because we are first and foremost reading activists, and we are using the mechanism of commerce in order to further our goals. So book club is definitely something we need to do to foster reading community. Because, as we know, reading is a social activity, so we need to bring people together, bring people to interface with the idea, to talk about books, and the bookshop is the best place to do that for our community. 

19:35 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

Recognising the importance of bibliotherapy, Wardah is starting a new book club, the Read Well Book Club, focused on mental health.  

19:43 Ibrahim Tahir 

We have another book club. We are starting one in collaboration with club HEAL. It's called Read Well Book Club. It's a book club that centres on wellness, or mental well-being, focusing on bibliotherapy. So the first book we are doing is Matt Haig's book. It's like a non-profit group, they're therapists, so they provide therapy for mainly muslims, or also non-muslims. Midnight Library is the first book we are doing, and that is such an obvious book to do for bibliotherapy and about understanding mental illness and the resilience that you need to go through it. That is quite an obvious book that we wanted. I think we are doing Linda Collins' book, and we are doing several other books by Singapore writers, and these are writers who have gone through trauma. So it is the act of their writing and the act of us reading their books and that we understand mental illness and how to go through it. 

20:40 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

In my own research with secondary school students, I've often heard students tell me they are happy to have time to read in school, as long as it's books that they like to read. To Sujia’s surprise, the primary school students in her book club asked for more such sessions.  

20:26 Gan Sujia 

All the students mentioned that they enjoyed the book club session, so I'm not sure if that was to make me happy or not, but some of them did ask if there would be a similar book club in the following year. That's quite heartening to know that they were looking forward to something similar. The students shared that they enjoyed the book club sessions, but in addition to just pointing out some of the things that they enjoyed about these virtual sessions, quite a number of them actually shared what they think were some of the advantages of holding these book club sessions online, and what were some of the affordances of physical book clubs as well. So some of them mentioned that in a digital book club, they were able to share their thoughts and their opinions more candidly, and they felt that they were more relaxed doing it in the comfort of their own homes. I remember one boy mentioned that he really liked being able to shower before joining the book club sessions so that he's not sticky after school. But some of the students also pointed out that not everyone might be paying attention if the book clubs were held online, some of them might be distracted. Might be looking at other things on the computer or even playing games. These are some of the things that we might need to take into consideration. And also, some of the students mentioned that they would like a hybridised book club session, which was really, really insightful. It's not something that I've thought about honestly, but now that they've put that thought in my mind, so they mentioned that they would like some sessions to be held online, and some sessions to be held face-to-face, and they would prefer the face-to-face sessions to be helped during the school holidays, so that they don't need to join these sessions after school. 

22:30 Host, Loh Chin Ee 

Books give us a starting point for talking about all sorts of issues, including difficult ones. Book clubs can be safe spaces for such conversations, with the book allowing participants to have a common reference point for deeper conversations. Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin’s introduces this concept of dialogism. Dialogism emphasises that through conversation, whether internally in our heads or with others, we make meaning. When we read, we are having a dialogue with the ideas in the book, agreeing, disagreeing with them or building on them. When we talk about books with others, more opportunities for conversation and developing understanding are created.  

The shared reading experience of book clubs encourages us to deepen our understanding of the world through books, grow closer to each other and understand ourselves and others better through dialogue. In a book club, reading is not just individual but becomes a social activity for us to connect with others, with ideas and with the world. 

Thank you for listening to the How We Read podcast episode, The Social Life of Book Clubs. Many thanks to our guests for their contributions, including the attendees of the November 2024 Bookworm Banter. I’m sorry we interrupted your lively conversations, and we couldn’t include all that was shared. The interviews were conducted in a physical studio except for Myra’s, which was done online.  

This episode was written and hosted by me, Loh Chin Ee. It was produced by Kenn Delbridge of SPLiCED Studios. Administrative was provided by Koh Yu Qun. The Singapore Book Council provided funding for Series 2 of the How We Read podcast. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a 5-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com