Read anything good lately? Book clubs are as timeless as the objects they’re built around

Judy Johnson (left) and Mim Hundley are members of a book club at WordsWorth Books & Co. in Little Rock, and recently discussed Richard Russo’s Straight Man, a comic novel about the pitfalls of university life.
Judy Johnson (left) and Mim Hundley are members of a book club at WordsWorth Books & Co. in Little Rock, and recently discussed Richard Russo’s Straight Man, a comic novel about the pitfalls of university life.

Homer fit right in at a January gathering at WordsWorth Books & Co., given that he's named for the Greek poet and has a brother named Virgil. He was also a very good boy, keeping to himself and a chewy treat while the rest of the group discussed Straight Man, a novel by Richard Russo about despair in academia.

Yes, Homer is a dog, an all-American breed, an expressive euphemism for mutt.

Yes, this is a book club, a gathering of like-minded folks exercising their intellect in a way that sounds so 19th-century. Or at least 20th.

Not so. Book clubs are all over, in homes and bookstores and public libraries. Ask around. A book club is no more than a couple of degrees of separation away.

Here's a little something about four local book clubs. Book lovers beware -- the list of books that simply must be read is about to get longer.

BOOKS, BROWNIES AND ENCHILADA CASSEROLE

In the beginning, there were four: Bob Cabe, Walter Nunn, Chris Barrier and Chuck Chappell, all Hendrix College grads, Cabe in 1963 and the others 1964. After a few years in the workforce, they talked about how they missed the opportunity to read. So in February 1973 they organized a book club, known only as "the book club."

The first book they read was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Published in 1970, the inspirational fable about a seagull was a phenomenon. Since then, the group has expanded to about 25 members, of whom 18 attended the January gathering at the home of Charlie and Anne Crow.

Members rotate as hosts. Hosts provide the food, the beer and the place.

Hosts also choose the books. For January, Crow chose The Color of Water by James McBride, a biographical tale of McBride's mother, a white woman who married a black man. The title comes from McBride asking his mother, Ruth, what color God is. The color of water, she replied.

"It's a memoir," Crow said, "but also a discovery of what his mother was really all about."

Garrett McAinsh agreed.

"I never would have read this book without this club," he said, "and I would have been a lesser person for it."

Chappell hosted in Decem-

ber. His selection was Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher, a book of fictional letters of recommendation written by a jaded professor of creative writing. Chappell, who retired in 2010 from teaching English at Hendrix, could identify.

"Beautifully done," he said. "Very entertaining, very funny, but very profound."

Book topics are all over the place, with a rough split between fiction and nonfiction.

"It's been great to know these people," Chappell said, "and so many of these books I wouldn't have read. It's been very enriching."

Many of the members are in their 70s. How fares the future?

"We're going to get together," Chappell said, "for as long as we can."

Death Becomes The Book Club, a Little Rock group that formed after World War II and reads only authors who have shuffled off this mortal coil, but is modern enough to have a website that lists the approximately 650 books its members have read since inception.

Its origin is described on the website. An incident, "known to history as World War II," caused the idea of a book club to wait until the cessation of hostilities. In January 1946, four charter members -- William Nash, A.L. Barber, James Vinson and Granville Davis -- met in the dining room of the Marion Hotel in downtown Little Rock. The Prince, in which Niccolo Machiavelli proposes realpolitik, pragmatism before ideology, was the first book.

Only the very best books were to be selected, assuming the authors were "substantially dead."

An alphabetical list of the authors ranges from Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, to Stefan Zweig, Chess Story.

In between are such notables as Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita; Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown's Body; Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles; Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar; Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five; and many more.

Charles Hathaway joined shortly before he retired 12 years ago as chancellor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

"I was invited to join by one of the members, and when you retire, you're looking for things to do," Hathaway said. "I enjoy it. It's a fine group."

"Scan the books that have been read," he added. "They read such a wide variety of books."

Members are primarily lawyers and physicians, Hathaway said, with a couple of academics. They meet the last Friday evening of the month for dinner and discussion.

There is no particular appeal to dead authors, Hathaway said.

"The charm of The Book Club for me is the members of the club, having that meal and discussing the book."

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JULIE HERMAN?

The Julie Herman Tuesday Morning Book Club is incongruous in two ways.

Julie Herman is long gone from Little Rock. And while the club meets on the third Tuesday, it hasn't met in the morning in years.

No matter. Herman is fondly remembered as one of several young married women with small children who were able to get baby sitters so they could meet in the morning.

"We were all women about the same age," said Nan Selz, who was present at the inception in 1968. "Not all of us knew one another but everybody brought somebody into the book club. It was a very interesting mix of people."

The group has about 10 people and meets monthly except for July and August. There's been turnover, but also stability. Some members have moved, and two have died, Selz said.

First book read? Too far back to remember. But like Selz's husband, Chris Barrier, "We did Jonathan Livingston Seagull."

The group recently finished The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, a novel of the Balkan wars. "It's a wonderful book, by the way, if you're a reader." Next up is another work of fiction, A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner.

As for Herman, she left early in the life of the book club, two or three years in.

"We have tried and tried to find her and have not been able to," Selz said. "She's disappeared off the face of the earth. The theory is she has a different name now.

"Looking for Julie Herman has not been successful."

HOMER REVISITED

Back at WordsWorth, where Homer was accompanied by his human, Mim Hundley, the talk was lively over red wine and munchies. Eight people were at the January meeting of the group, which gathers every other month.

Jean Cazort, whose family has owned the bookstore since 1993 -- before chains and Amazon -- had a book club there for about 20 years, took a break, and started back up five years ago.

Others on hand included Shirley Jo Pine, Sidney Spitzer, Vicki Plant, Jim Harper, Judy Johnson and Clarence Cash. Speculation was offered on the makeup of most book clubs -- more women than men. Why is that?

"Women are more communicative," Cash said, "and men already know it all."

Pine knows of a book club that is composed mostly of gay women.

"It's an interesting group," she said. "They tend to read women's literature, and probably wouldn't read anything frivolous."

The group is alternately kind to and tough on Richard Russo's Straight Man. Clearly, most agreed, Russo had spent time in academia, where the political infighting can be so bitter.

"By the end of the book," Pine said, "I was tired of Hank," the main character, who is stuck in a small university in a small town teaching English. "He was so full of Hank."

Cash said he'd bought both Straight Man and The Revenant by Michael Punke.

"I couldn't put down The Revenant," he said. "This one I could put down."

Reading is solitary by its nature. Why be in a book club?

Judy Johnson: "I read books that I might not have picked up on my own."

Jim Harper: "You get so many perspectives on a book."

Clarence Cash: "It's the association with wonderful people."

Homer: No comment.

Style on 02/16/2016

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