I’ve never had a book club of my own but when I was in high school and college I attended my mother’s book club. It was so different from my classes. The ladies sat around, drank wine and mostly discussed how the topics in the book related to their lives. Once my mother asked me to come to her book club to talk about E.M. Forester’s A Passage to India, on which I’d delivered a graduate conference paper. As soon as I started talking about how the book illuminates the difficult role of the subaltern in British-colonized India, I knew I’d lost my crowd. Pass me the Shiraz, will you Angie? This girl is droning on.

I’ve never been great with groups of people unless I’m at the head of philosophy or English class. I’m a true nerd -- the kind of person who gets excited about the origin of words, the history of colloquialisms, the craft of the sentence. Before I had my daughter I would stay up nights with a glass of scotch reading the Old English Dictionary. Did you know the word “bonfire” comes not originally from the French “good fire” but the French’s misinterpretation of the word for the Anglo-saxon funeral pyre? Do you care?

Most folks read a book and want to be entertained or learn how the characters’ struggles relate to their own life. There’s nothing about my interest in the words or sentences that is inherently better than other concerns -- like how a book can teach someone how to lead a better life. I’m also happy for the practical knowledge! For example, after the last Bookmans Flagstaff Book Chat with Regina and Desire on apocalyptic literature that if there ever is an apocalypse, I learned from Margaret Atwood’s Orynx and Crake how useful plastic sandwich bags will be. I’m going to start hoarding them now.