When JoAnn Olson reached out to invite me to a Coffee and Book Chat, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was walking into. I figured there would be coffee. I figured there would be talk about books. But the phrase sounded a little like a book club, and I have always been hesitant to join one.
It isn’t that I dislike book clubs. I actually wish I could be part of several. I just worry about the pressure. Read this book. Read it by this date. Read to this chapter. Life gets busy, and the responsibility feels heavier than it should. What if I didn’t have time?
JoAnn assured me this was something different. She said she’d explain the concept when I arrived. My only instructions were simple: bring a few books I’d been reading and show up a little early to meet the organizers.
When I asked my mom before September’s meeting if she wanted to tag along, she grabbed her current Ann Patchett and said she’d love to come. We were both a little nervous. But book-minded people are like-minded people, and excitement won out over nerves.
We met at Petrell Hall in Brimson, a building with deep local history. It was a little cold inside, the kind of chill that comes from old walls and early fall mornings, but the coffee was brewing. As readers trickled in, warm conversations filled the space and the room felt less cold by the minute. There were eleven of us, all carrying books, all ready to talk about stories and everything that comes with them.
The Coffee and Book Chat is something organizer Terri Rocher brought from Florida, where she spends part of her year. She told me she had been looking for community down south. When she saw a sign for a “Literary Society,” she answered, “Why, yes!”
She signed up immediately. She has since become involved in a few different groups that are “coffee and book chats,” which sound a little less formal than Literary Society, but the idea is the same. Friends sharing thoughts about books. What they like. What they don’t. What they’re reading. What they’ve read. All while forming a community.
“You get to know people through the books they are reading,” Terri said.
Despite being the organizer of the meetings, she laughed when she admitted she isn’t a big reader. She reads daily for a set amount of time, so it can take her a while to finish a book. That is one reason why the book chat format appeals to her.
Another participant advised that she found the book chat to be a way to find community outside her own house. One woman mentioned she loves hearing about books from others.
“I read books I never would have picked up to read,” she said.
She added that she appreciates the Arrowhead Library System’s Mail-a-Book Program, which allows her to receive books while living rurally, something I appreciate as well.
Mom and I weren’t the only newcomers. One reader came at the last minute when a neighbor mentioned where she was headed that morning. When she heard it wasn’t a traditional book club, she thought she might give it a try. She didn’t care to be part of a “regular” book club because she didn’t care much for contemporary fiction, which is where many book clubs tend to gravitate.
After introductions, we did a round robin of what we’d been reading. I brought Where the Green Light Shines by Ryan Rodgers and a book of poetry by a local author, which I’ll be sharing more about with North Shore Journal readers soon.
We had barely made it around the circle when I realized how much variety we already had. Books that overlapped. Books that didn’t. Books that made us curious. Books that made us laugh. Books that made us want to write down titles before we forgot them.
Here are the books and authors mentioned throughout the get-together. (I want to read them all.)
• Fannie Flagg
• The Cat Who… series — Lilian Jackson Braun
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle — Barbara Kingsolver
• A League of Lady Poisoners — Lisa Perrin
• Cool Machine — Colson Whitehead
• Tana French’s Cal Hooper Trilogy (The Searcher, The Hunter, The Keeper)
• Winter Garden — Kristin Hannah
• Olive Kitteridge — Elizabeth Strout
• The Cold Cold Ground — Adrian McKinty
• Verity — Colleen Hoover
• East of Eden — John Steinbeck
• Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will — Robert M. Sapolsky
• Virgil Wander — Leif Enger
• Theo of Golden — Allen Levi
• Insomnia — Stephen King
• Anything by Bill Bryson
• The Madness of Crowds — Louise Penny
• Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series
• The Pirate Queen — Ariel Lawhon
• Buckeye — Patrick Ryan
• Sold on a Monday — Kristina McMorris
• Boys in the Trees — Carly Simon
• Remarkably Bright Creatures — Shelby Van Pelt
• The Crash — Freida McFadden
• The Four Winds — Kristin Hannah
Terri talked about Verity and did not recommend it, which made one participant want to read it even more.
“I learn something from everything I read, including about myself,” she said. I admired that quality in her. It made me want to read Verity, too, even though I didn’t care for one of the author’s other books.
Mom and I haven’t stopped talking about Book Chat. After just a short time together, I felt like part of a community. Kind of like I had made a ton of new friends. Mom said the same, stating this is the kind of book club she can see herself being part of.
The Brimson Coffee and Book Chat meetings are usually held the second Wednesday of the month between June and September from 10:30 to noon at Petrell Hall. When the organizers and some members head south for the winter, the meetings move to Ault Town Hall.
For more information, reach out to Terri at terri.roher@gmail.com or JoAnn at Wolfie.pipp@gmail.com. They encourage others outside the area to consider starting a Coffee and Book Chat in their own towns and help spread the love of books and book communities all along the Shore and Range. The concept is simple and the conversations can get pretty deep, strengthening the community of book lovers out there and, as one participant said, “give us more freedom to read.”
