In Favor of Starting a Book Club

“How about The Catcher in the Rye?”

Last month, my friend Regan and I started a 2-person book club. We met in college, both working towards English degrees. We haven’t seen each other in months, but being in quarantine has provided us with the perfect opportunity to reconnect and to finish off all those classics we never got around to in school. 

Book clubs are the perfect pandemic activity. They’re just the right blend of brain-stimulating work and (distanced) social fun. In fact, a lot of companies and businesses are launching their own virtual book clubs right now, including Man Repeller and the New York Public Library. Not only do these programs provide recommendations that readers may not pick up otherwise, but opportunities to talk to people around the country/world.

Okay. You’ve got your friends, your new Super Cool Club Name, and newfound excitement. But what to read? Well, that’s where I come in. 

How to Murder Your Life, Cat Marnell’s rollercoaster of a memoir, chronicles her wild 20s in New York. It is a story of substance abuse, elite parties, and the magazine editorial world of the early-2000s. If you’re feeling cooped up, this is the perfect book to cure you of even the smallest hint of boredom. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is a dark, mystifying story about the dangers of groupthink and idolization of the past. It follows a group of Classics students at a small college in Vermont as they get tangled up in ancient Roman rituals, murder, and an FBI investigation. There are a lot of twists and turns in this one, and it’ll keep your group talking about it for weeks afterward. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Collected Stories is both whimsical and thought-provoking. It is a collection of the writer’s greatest short stories, including "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", his well-known tale that explores human complexity in regards to otherness and exploitation. His writing falls under the genre of magical realism, and every story is a portrait of daily life infused with the fantastical. This book will transport you to worlds both familiar and utterly mystical at the same time.

Grab a snack, snuggle down into your favorite chair, and turn the front page. Include your family, your friends, your neighbor’s dog. After all, there is no better time to read, and no better time than reading.