"Ch-ch-Ch-ch-Ch-ch," greets my ears on a sizzling hot New York evening. My book club host, Derek, clad in an Izod shirt, a pale shade of pink, stands, shaker in hand, shaking the evening's concoction. He expertly pours the cocktail into a martini glass and offers it to me. In this book club, we take our drinking, as well as our reading, seriously. The cocktail of the evening accompanies the featured book, The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty, set in the 1920's and '30's.
The laughter is so loud emanating from inside the Brooklyn apartment, I know the buzzer falls on deaf ears. I twist the door knob and step into a home I've never been to before. "I swiped right so many times, my finger got a cramp," declares Lindsay, my young 30-something book club host, describing her first (and only) venture onto Tender. Ahh, the joy of being with women 15 years younger, childless, and husbandless. Frivolity fades into the background as we reach for our copies of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
"15C," I say, precisely, to the doorman in this Upper East Side white-glove apartment building. As the elevator whisks me higher, I smooth out my skirt and fiddle with my faux pearl necklace. "How did I, a flight attendant from Kansas, ever get mixed up in a book club with women who work at Christie's and discuss Monets and Donatellos?" I wonder. I glance around the room full of women. In honor of our book choice, Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, everyone was draped in pearls of some sort. I suspect mine are the only fakes in the bunch.
I've been blessed to have been in three book clubs over the last three decades. I've heard stories of book clubs that ban drinking. Others assess a fee if the book hasn't been read. Some clubs last a few months, others for years. The "Christie's auction house" club had been together for a dozen years when my husband's friend, Lois, invited me to join. I believe they are still together 18 years later. To my young sensibilities, each member's home was more beautiful than the previous month. Dinners focused on themes taken from the book. At the last meeting I attended, we discussed A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.* The food was not take out from the local Indian restaurant. No, the tandoori chicken was homemade by the host in a Tandoor oven that she had brought back from Delhi. I decided my apartment, cooking, nor art knowledge was up to snuff, so I recused myself from this wonderful group. (And most of my spare time was taken up reading Mother Goose to my two babies under two.)
My second book club was started by a friend of mine, Janet, and an acquaintance of hers. The acquaintance chose the first book for discussion: The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. She also suggested reading the follow-up, Revenge Wears Prada as our second book club discussion. Janet gave her the same look Meryl Streep gave Anne Hathaway in the movie (The Devil Wears Prada) that said, "you absolutely, positively cannot be serious with that suggestion." With one member less the following month, and literary books on the horizon, this club lasted several years, several babies, several marriages and one divorce.
My third, and current group was started by Margaret, a book editor, Jennifer, my friend of 14 years, and her sister Rachael. The written word is precious to all of us in the club. No one wants to be the one who chooses "that book." "That book" being the one that is so trivial, so shallow that it gets him/her thrown out of the group. I believe my choice In the Land of the Long White Cloud by Sarah Lark put me on the block. I attempted a marketing spin the evening we discussed it. "I chose this book because I thought it would be a fun, lite summer read (akin to elevator music). It took us away from the humid air and crowded streets of Manhattan and whisked us to the hills and dales of rural New Zealand, circa 1880. Right, everyone??" We might as well have watched the mini-series, "The Thorn Birds," (though set in Australia) instead of reading this 800 page phone book.
Reading and imbibing seem to go drink in hand with all my book clubs, I'm happy to say. Karyn, the host when Peyton Place by Grace Metalious was discussed, mixed up a whiskey sour punch (her mother's recipe) in her crystal punch bowl that Dean Martin would have guzzled. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles was "discussed" at Bathtub Gin, a speak easy in Chelsea. Myself and three other book club members (I suggested the place), wandered aimlessly in front of an ice cream shop where the gin joint was suppose to be. I got worried I was going to be "that person." However, like prohibition, which was the backdrop for the novel, a door man sidled up to us, with our perplexed faces, and whispered, "Gin, ladies?" Suddenly, a back wall in the ice cream shop was ajar and we slid into the clandestine 1920's for a few hours.
I don't know how long this current book club will last. Already one member is in the process of moving. I guess book clubs are like life. One never quite knows how it will play out, what relationships will develop from it, and certainly, how long it will exist. We can only have fun and enrich ourselves while we are here.
*A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry has been mentioned in two previous blogs: Memory Block (March 24, 2013) and Kindles, Nooks, and Old-Fashioned Books (April 28, 2011).
