COMMUNITY/LEARNING
Why Book Club When You Can Doc Club?
Shifting from written to visual can be deeply engaging (and sanity-saving)
While I always felt a little ashamed when I didn’t complete a book, by far the most embarrassing was when I accidentally read the wrong one. I’d been so proud to finally finish reading before the group reconvened, until my take on how the protagonist navigated challenges gave me away. I sounded downright profound… until pronouns revealed I was quite literally not on the same page as everyone else: “And that’s when I knew that he would emerge bruised but not broken.”
“‘She,’ you mean?” asked a few attendees simultaneously. We exchanged puzzled looks. “No,” I replied, exasperated as I summarized the plot of a book about a young man no one else had read.
After we laughed for a solid three minutes, book club continued as I listened about a book I hoped to someday read when time allowed. In that particular club, we at least attempted to read the books. In another, rather than “hello,” members so often greeted each other with “I only got through Chapter 3” or “I didn’t get a chance to start this time” that it became Wine Club, though we still called it “Book Club” because that seemed more respectable on a Wednesday.
