Book Club Fever

Local book clubs meet in living rooms and clubhouses, on lanais and in synagogues and public libraries. Some are private, with limited members, while others are open to anyone. Here’s a look at some local book clubs along the Gulfshore.

The woman in the white-beaded denim jacket leans forward earnestly. "So why was she so promiscuous?" she asks.

"… when she stepped out of the front door?" the woman next to her adds, finishing her sentence.
The nine women in the room chuckle.

It’s the monthly meeting of the Naples Sailing and Yacht Club book club, and the women are grappling with Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Prize-winning novel Snow. Seated in the boardroom of the squat, lemon-yellow building, they’re struggling to understand the thoughts and motives of its main characters, who exist in a world different than their own.

Carolyn Mollers is leading the discussion today because their usual leader, Susan Becker, a retired professor from the University of Illinois, Springfield, is out of town. Mollers calls Snow "a political and personal book about Turkish people and how they feel about us westerners." And it’s not a pretty picture, she warns.

When she also describes the novel as "a scrambled mess of characters and situations," the women all nod and agree. They’re emphatic in their opinion of how difficult they found the novel, as if getting through Snow was as challenging as trudging through actual drifts.

Talk turns to immigration, and they compare stories of their grandparents and discuss the current state of immigration. Four of them say they’ve visited Turkey. One says The Bookseller of Kabul, which the group has read previously, helped her understand Snow, and Lynne Nordhoff tells them about Anne Tyler’s novel, Digging to America, about an American and an Iranian family who each adopt a girl from Korea.

Another woman has read it too. "I hated to see it end," she says, and two other women, with that gleam book-lovers get when they hear of a wonderful book, look at each other and say in unison,

"Oh, we can’t wait to read it then!"

Someone suggests they put it on their list of books to read so they can discuss it at a future meeting.

Mollers, reading from her notes, refers to Snow as "a big, ambitious novel in which Pamuk tries to do too much." And again, the women laugh in agreement. "But," Mollers concludes, "it stimulated our thinking, and that’s why we read."

Afterwards, Jane Roberts says, "What’s fun about this group is that you start talking about the book, and it leads to some other things. It’s like tentacles reaching out."

When asked about the best book/worst book discussed at the book club, Roberts immediately picks Snow as her least favorite. The Orchard Thief, a nonfiction book by Susan Orlean set in South Florida, was her favorite.

Maida Sjoberg, another participant, confides to a guest that "it was a very intense meeting today. Snow added a little more variety to our book reading."

A patrician woman with white hair, wearing a pink sweater outfit, Sjoberg shares that she also belongs to a book club at The Carlisle Naples, where she lives. The Naples Public Library picks a book, then sends them paperback and large-print copies, according to their needs. The library then sends someone to lead a group discussion about the book.

Like Sjoberg, Lynne Nordhoff also belongs to more than one book club. You could call Nordhoff the Johnny Appleseed of book clubs, because she’s founded three of them since she moved from Chicago to Naples in 1994. She started the Naples Sailing and Yacht Club book club—open only to members—four years ago.

In 1999, she started a book club at the League Club, which consists of Junior League women.

Twelve to 20 women meet monthly. And she began the first one, The Mangrove Readers, in November 1994. The group of neighborhood women meet at each others’ homes.

"It started out as a conversation over lunch or playing tennis," she says. "‘Read any good books lately?’ Then you get a handful of people who have that same interest in books. It just blossoms."

Elaine’s Offspring
Elaine Newton knows novels. A voracious and discerning reader, Newton has an eye for new must-read books—even before they’re typically awarded multiple prizes and honors. Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Toronto’s York University and a well-known book critic, Newton’s been offering Critic’s Choice lectures at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples for 17 seasons. Her lectures grew to be so popular that each month she now gives the same lecture three times: twice on a Thursday in the Daniels Pavilion and once on a Saturday morning in the larger hall. Almost 900 people attend each month.

Her tickets are hot commodities and lectures quickly sell out. Smart readers know to buy the season’s tickets as a subscription series soon after they go on sale.
Newton discusses novels with insight and wit. It’s as if she reaches into a book and turns it inside out, showing you its skeleton and nervous system, its secret heart. She uncovers each book’s inner patterns and symbolism.

Gail Webster-Patterson, executive vice president at Huntington National Bank in Naples, has not only attended Newton’s lectures since the beginning, but created a unique book club around them.

Each month, Patterson invites five different women to attend the Thursday afternoon lecture—clients she thinks will enjoy the experience. Her bank provides the tickets as well as copies of the book. Then, after the lecture, the women go to Patterson’s Pelican Bay home for finger sandwiches and sparkling conversation.

"We sit at my dining room table and talk about what she said and what we think of the book," Patterson says. "I’ve been doing this since year one with Elaine Newton. It’s my way of stretching myself, forcing myself to read something other than what I call airplane trash. I’ve met some wonderful women; I can say to my female clients, ‘Here’s an opportunity to meet other people.’ Everybody I invite loves it. Elaine has a way of pulling stuff out of a book. Sometimes I say, ‘I didn’t get that at all when I was reading it!’ Then I want to go back and reread the book."
If Patterson’s driving to Sarasota or the east coast on business, she’ll listen to books on CD. Sometimes, she says, she’ll read half a book, attend the lecture, and then finish the book with new insight gleaned from Newton’s remarks.

"She pulls stuff out of books—symbolism, parallels. She gets into it. And after she says those things, you say, ‘Wow.’"

Patterson says she particularly enjoyed Saturday by Ian McEwan, The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler, Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus and Margaret Atwood’s books.

Ruth McNeal of Naples was one of Patterson’s guests. "I thought, ‘What a great idea,’" she says.

So she started her own book discussion group six years ago, also based on Newton’s lectures.

McNeal and four other women in her building attend the lecture, then go to the Ritz-Carlton, Naples, for tea and discussion. Due to everyone’s erratic schedule they took a break for the 2006-2007 season, but plan to start up again for the 2007-2008 season.

"We just have the best time," McNeal says. "We would never read these books if not for Elaine’s lectures. They’re not books you pick up casually. They’re good books, not chick lit.
"She’s such a learned person. It’s like being in a classroom, getting a good lecture."

McNeal loved Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. "That was an excellent book," she says, adding, "They made it into a movie." She also loved Saturday and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.

Anything she didn’t like?

"I didn’t care much for White Teeth (by Zadie Smith)," she says. "But Elaine makes them so interesting. Her lectures are fascinating. I learn a lot."

Newton’s equally thrilled. "I think it’s wonderful they’re exploring the book and are also discussing what I said as well. They’re doing their own interpretation in relationship to the text." And that’s what it’s all about, she says.

"Reading is not a passive activity; it’s an active activity between the writer, the book and the reader. That’s marvelous if my perspective can begin a discussion for them. That’s what it’s meant to do, to incite thoughtful interpretation of the text."

Her lectures, she says, are just a starting point.

Everyone is Welcome
In terms of offering a cornucopia of book discussion groups, the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee wins, hands-down.