BOOK CLUB ESCAPE

After moving to El Dorado County I wanted to meet some people with similar interests, as I had done in previous places. This turned out to be harder than I expected, partly because I don’t really fit in here. I am a San Francisco Bay liberal; the majority of people here are conservative Republicans, Tea Party members, NRA supporters. I am a Unitarian; the closest Unitarian church is an hour’s drive away. Though that might be all right on Sunday mornings, it is in the evenings that conspiracies are hatched and friendships are formed. (I can no longer drive after dark.) Most Sierra Club hikes are too strenuous for me. Having worked for fifty years, I had no intention of looking for a job! The closest library branch needed volunteers; I tried that for a while and enjoyed it, but our travels make it hard for me to commit to any schedule. That also eliminated many other possibilities for volunteer work.

We spend much time in the library anyway when we are not traveling, and one day I noticed that the county library has a book club that meets once a month in the morning. That made me hesitate. My picture of book clubs has always been of uneducated readers reading lightweight books and making inane comments, or of members using the club as an excuse for gossiping about local events and drinking a lot of wine. However, I was getting desperate for intelligent companionship. (My partner provides a lot of it, but I was eager to meet other women.) So, I attended the next book club meeting to see just how bad it was.

It was a pleasant surprise. About a dozen intelligent people gathered to discuss that month’s selection. One of the librarians, Tamela Entrikin, was the leader. She had thought carefully about the book and, like a skilled teacher, encouraged us to comment without dominating the discussion herself or letting us wander too far onto other subjects. Tamela gave me a list of the books to be read in coming months. While I had read a couple of them, the rest were unfamiliar titles or books I wanted to read. Traveling would not be a problem, as members often cannot attend for various reasons. Thanks to my Nook, I could even download books on the club’s list and read them while traveling.

That was three years ago. Since then I have enjoyed getting to know the other members and reading many of the books. Though of course some have been on topics that did not interest me, in general I have liked rediscovering old favorites or being introduced to unfamiliar authors. If not for the book club, for instance, I probably would have not read Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door, which led to my interest in the Harper Lee mystery. (My last post gave the details.) Our reading Olive Kitteridge introduced me to Elizabeth Stroud. Being a retired science writer, I have been disappointed that we read too few science-related books, but you can’t have everything. I can find those books on my own.

Perhaps the greatest benefit, though, has been meeting compatible people. El Dorado County, though a cultural backwater in some respects, does have a friendly, knowledgeable community within it. I am grateful to have found it.