Forget Running Groups and Work Socials. Find a Book Club

Molly Dunn had always wanted to join a book club. Until last winter, the twenty-five-year-old had been too busy or distracted to find the right one. The opportunity to start one struck when she began a new job as a sales associate at BMV, a Toronto bookstore. With her manager’s permission, she set a date for the inaugural meeting and posted an announcement to the store’s Instagram page. The question was: Would anyone come?

Her manager had stipulated that at least four people needed to attend, and Dunn was already wondering if she’d have to call on friends to fill the spots. The weather was one issue: the first meetup was set to take place on a Tuesday at the end of February. The city was still reeling from the aftermath of a winter storm, with little to no snow cleared on the slippery sidewalks. Then, there was the idea of book clubs as old fashioned, something older people gathered to do in a suburban home, not an event where young people could mingle with strangers.

In the end, seventeen people attended—much more than Dunn had expected, and a good start for a new type of event at the store. Subsequent meetings would consistently garner between twenty and twenty-five guests, according to Dunn (though no recent events have been scheduled since Dunn has started a master’s degree). I was one of the attendees at the inaugural meeting. I’d pushed past my own anxiety to come to a space where I didn’t know anyone, but I was comforted by Dunn’s excitement and the smell of books.

I walked over to Dunn and saw that she was putting out platters of cheese, crackers, and doughnuts, as well as coffee and tea—it was clear she had pulled out all the stops. I then made my way to one of the sofas, glancing around me in disbelief at the number of people who had showed up. There was twenty-three-year-old Naufel Ahmed, who grew up in the Middle East, where he had a difficult time finding book clubs featuring English books. Then, in walked thirty-six-year-old Natalia Buia, a long-time reader, who was glad to be in a room with people who all shared the same interest. Twenty-nine-year-old Sarah Pereira was looking forward to the meeting because most of her friends don’t read. We were set to discuss Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

According to the Canadian Leisure and Reading Study, the number of young people joining book clubs in the past few years has been steadily rising. We’re in “the season of book clubs,” said Claire Foster, store manager of Toronto’s Type Books on Queen Street. But this new wave of meetings feels different from past iterations. “Whenever you think about book clubs—at least for me, growing up—like when you saw book clubs in the media, you’re thinking about these old white women swirling their wine,” says Iman Ahmednur, co-founder of We’re Not Strangers, a social club that runs a recurring book club. What makes We’re Not Strangers feel different is their adoption of unique themes, like a Galentine’s-themed book club. The co-founders are also focused on choosing books that are trending in online spaces, says Ahmednur.

We’re Not Strangers is not the only book club geared toward a younger crowd; a lot of today’s book clubs seem to feature niche themes. At Toronto Silent Book Club, for example, attendees gather in cafes and pubs to quietly read in a group. Queen Books’ Growing Pains book club is for those fifteen and older who wish to read beyond the young adult section over the summer. Wine About Books runs several book clubs, including a romantasy club and a cookbook club. And while it’s true that many of these in-person meetups feature buzzy releases that are much discussed on BookTok and in other internet spaces, they also feel like a long-overdue protest against only talking about books behind a screen.

Though it’s difficult to track what the first online book club in North America was, many publications and scholars attribute the popularization of online bookish communities to Oprah. In 1996, the talk-show host started “Oprah’s Book Club,” a TV-based book discussion group that ran until 2010. Though readers had been using listservs, bulletin boards, and chat rooms to bond over a shared love of books, online groups specifically dedicated to reading started popping up more frequently after Oprah launched her book club.

I met twenty-seven-year-old Shizza Khan at BMV’s event. Knowing that she doesn’t live downtown and had to commute for well over an hour to get there, I was curious what made her decide to join. “My book club is online,” she said. “So, there’s not a lot of interaction outside of the book club, and I really wanted to meet people in Toronto.”

In my conversations with other attendees, one word kept coming up: community. Some mentioned feeling lonely or isolated in Toronto, while others expressed wanting to “get out of the house,” but all threads seemingly lead back to a desire for connection. Even though we were at a book club, the meeting wasn’t necessarily about the specific text for a lot of readers; rather, it was an opportunity to use one’s passion or interest as a vehicle for social connection. Book clubs are also unique in their ability to bring out even the most introverted participants. Making friends at the gym or a work-related event, for example, can be tough because there’s no specific line of conversation. Book clubs, which are moderated and themed around discussing a specific reading, can alleviate some of the pressure.

Stefania Kuczynski, a master’s student at the University of Toronto’s iSchool, specializing in library and information science, raised a similar point. She believes book clubs are primarily about community building because “do you really want to talk only about books or do you want to talk about books with other people?” she asked.

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Meeting new people is one reason why people in Toronto are joining social events; finding a partner is another. Recently, there has been a rise in Torontonians joining running clubs as a new way to date, and seemingly embracing in-person dating events.

When I asked Foster, founder of Type Books’ book club, if she thought people were using book clubs for this reason, she mused on my question for a bit and then said, “Not at ours.” I suspect she might be right, at least when it comes to heterosexual meet cutes. Perhaps it’s because the idea of book clubs as a “female endeavor” still persists today. Raheleh Abbasinejad, the book club facilitator at Queen Books in Toronto, told me that an average meeting at the store brings in four to five male regulars, compared to ten to fifteen women, though it depends on the book. “Serious” or political books tend to attract more men, she says.

This is not the case for all Toronto book clubs, though. Aaron Cain, a librarian at Toronto Public Library’s Lillian H. Smith branch, says their popular Dystopia Book Club “stand[s] out because of the number of men that we attract.” When I asked him why he thinks this is, he said that it’s “probably” because of the book genre, which “historically has been more of a male-centred or dominated field,” but ultimately, he is not sure. (The club is currently on pause while Cain takes a break after running it for more than four years.)

My own book club experiences have been full of women. For example, of the seventeen people who attended the BMV meetup, only three were male presenting. And, in some ways, my interest in talking to others about books has added new layers of connection with my existing female friends.

Throughout my time working on this story, I often regaled my friends with anecdotes of what I’d encountered as I learned about these book clubs across the city. In one such conversation, one friend waited for me to finish and then casually told me that she was thinking of starting her own book club. Her remark took me aback; I hadn’t realized the trend had spread to my own social circles. She told me she wanted to start a club called “The Ferrante Fanatics.” Four of her friends had been reading Elena Ferrante, after she had relentlessly begged them to, and would separately come talk to her about the books. “I [thought], we’re kind of doing like a scattered book club, why don’t I formalize this?”

Although I had previously read a Ferrante book and didn’t enjoy it, I somehow found myself wanting to join the club. Even if doing so meant potentially subjecting myself to rereading a work I hadn’t liked, I realized that knowing I would get to discuss the book with a group after made the endeavour feel worth it to me.