Once a month, a group of ten to 20 people push the shelves in the left room of the Harvard Book Store to make space for their discussion. They’ve just finished reading a book for the month’s meeting. The regulars exchange glances as they look around at the new faces.
The usual suspects gather: the reader who does not like anything on the list but comes anyway, the plot-obsessed reader probing the buttresses of the work, the classics-lover who points at every allusion to Shakespeare that failed, the reader who lectures on one element of the book on which he is an expert, and the reader who did not do the reading but watched the movie. Some readers are in their twenties, some of them are past the midcentury line.
The members of the Harvard Square Book Circle are ready to begin.
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Rachel B. Cass, head buyer at Harvard Book Store, has been involved with the Book Circle since its conception in 2008. She leads the monthly meetings and suggests books for the group to read, sometimes polling the regulars over the group email list. The readings vary in time and genre. Past picks have included University Professor Stephen J. Greenblatt’s “The Swerve,” Junot Diaz’s “This is How You Lose Her,” and Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”
Cass starts the meetings with introductions and first impressions; she does not have any trouble sparking a conversation. “Cambridge people want to express their opinions,” she says. “The best discussions take place when readers disagree.”
She tells me that their last meeting witnessed a heated debate about Ron Rash’s “Serena,” as some readers hated the book. According to Cass, this is one of the special things about the Book Circle: It’s never certain who is going to take which side. In Cass’s experience, she says, she tends to like the book more after the Book Circle has met.
In the Book Circle, acquaintance and shared interest provide a common ground to engage in the conversation with sincerity and enthusiasm, while the readers’ lack of intimacy discourages them from passing rash judgment on each other’s opinions.
“We end up having a lot of questions,” Cass says. Often, phones come out in an attempt to clear up confusion with some Googling.
“For one thing, I am in no way an expert,” Cass confesses. Nobody is. Harvard Square Book Circle is not section. This is a joint effort to tackle a work together, outside the realm of scholarship.
Cass recounts her joy when she spotted a regular at local bakery-café Panera Bread, reading the next month’s book. She says that some members get together outside the club as well.
Our conversation moves on from the dynamics of the Book Circle to books themselves. Novels are easily the forerunners as books that prompt the deepest conversations, she says. With short story collections people have conflicting interests, as they want to discuss different stories. Sometimes nonfiction works well, Cass adds. She says one of the most attended meetings was the discussion of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.”
There have been, however, meetings where discussions died before the gong of the hour. One such occasion, several years ago, was when they read Terry Tempest Williams’s “Finding Beauty in a Broken World.” The readers were challenged by descriptions of the activities of prairie dogs that went on for pages and therefore could not connect with the work, she says. The Book Circle, Cass tells me, favors narratives with overarching themes or trajectories.
Finally, along with oration and literary camaraderie, the Book Circle includes the offer of Cass’s homemade cookies.
I tell her the Circle meets all the criteria to get funding from the College. Not only do they engage in an intellectual enterprise, but they also serve cookies. If they up their game on exclusivity and enforce a comp process, Harvard Square Book Circle can easily make it to the extracurricular scene on campus.
Many nights of the week, I depart from the Yard to find my way back to my room in the dark. While crossing Mass. Ave., especially when the weather is cold, as it most often is around here, SI am tempted to take a right to fuel up with a warm cup of coffee at Starbucks. But the soft lights of the black shop on the left capture my eye, and I am lured to the Harvard Book Store. Next time I happen to walk by, I will be sure to scan the windows to see what the Harvard Square Book Circle is reading.
