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Stuck at home in this era of sheltering in place, many have turned back to long-forgotten lists of hobbies they had wanted to try, people they had meant to reach out to, personal goals they had hoped to achieve.
For the past month, five local librarians followed the trend by each setting out to read one book they’d never gotten around to reading. They gathered to discuss their experiences — and found themselves questioning what makes a book worth wanting to read in the first place.
The librarians convened for the May meeting of the New Haven Free Public Library’s monthly Genre Book Club, which took place over Zoom.
Each month, the Genre Book Club hosts a discussion centered around a particular theme, from “adult books with child narrators” to “Earth Day.” Participants read a book related to the topic of their own choosing and come ready to discuss with the group. The resulting conversation incorporates a range of perspectives on the topic at hand — and yields a new set of book recommendations in the process.
The May Genre Book Club meeting, which celebrated the group’s first anniversary, called for attendees to read “that book you’ve always wanted to read but never have.”
Zoom
Jennifer Gargiulo.
Librarian Jennifer Gargiulo, who runs the book club, said she chose the topic specifically for an era of shuttered bookstores and e‑book-reliant libraries. “I wanted people to be able to read the books they had off their shelves,” she said.
The book club started as a way to increase circulation among the New Haven Free Public Library, Gargiulo said. The book club plans to convene next on June 17 to discuss collections of poetry.
The May attendees happened to consist entirely of librarians, whose chosen tomes ranged from alien invasion novel The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin (Haley Grunloh’s pick) to Waging Peace in Vietnam, a book on the history of anti-war resistance in the U.S. military (Seth Godfrey’s selection.)
Juliann Castelbuono shared that she read Lois Lowry’s dystopian novel The Giver, a winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal that is frequently taught in middle schools. Reading the novel as an adult, she said she wouldn’t have recommended it to her younger self.
The Giver, by Lois Lowry.
“I’m really glad that I didn’t read that as a child,” she said. “I think I would have been very upset.”
The Giver “always ends up in children’s collections because the main character is 12,” Gargiulo said, but there are plenty of books that center around children yet are worthwhile for adult readers.
“It’s really not fair to look at something like young adult [books] and say, ‘That’s not literature,’” Castelbuono said.
Castelbuono noted that books often dismissed as “not literature” are cultural products that can teach readers much about the contexts in which they were written. In 200 years, she said, historians will look back on young adult novels to learn what it was like to live in the 21st century.
A good book “pulls together a feeling that we can’t articulate,” said Margaret Girgis, who heads the library’s Young Minds and Family Learning department. Young adult and children’s literature can certainly have that effect. Girgis said she loves young adult fiction in particular for the depth of emotion that stories in that genre can offer.
Castelbuono agreed. “When did we decide that to be an adult meant to be gray or boring?”
The conversation morphed into a reflection on why certain books are considered must-reads, while other meaningful stories are dismissed.
People often feel pressured to read specific works of literature because there is “something to prove,” Castelbuono suggested.
“When I read a classic, I want to feel a part of a global conversation,” she said. But there are other compelling reasons to pick up a book. “Sometimes I want to read the same way you watch television, as a distraction, and I don’t think that makes it less valuable.”
The Genre Book Club’s open-ended format was partly intended to welcome a wide spectrum of tastes and approaches to reading, according to Gargiulo. There is no expectation to read a particular book that might not speak to everyone.
“You can try to read something that’s out of [your] comfort zone or something that’s in your comfort zone,” Gargiulo said. “If you don’t like a book, you can put it down.”
