The Author Book Club

Or, how I came to be reading Jane Austen with friends

During my senior year as an undergraduate, I took a seminar on Jane Austen. We read and discussed all of her published works, along with a novel or two that influenced her writing. Since that time, I’ve re-read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma but not Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, which were my least favorites. With every re-reading, my enjoyment of and appreciation for Austen grows. I’ve always had a bit of a yen for a book club focused just on her works and other “Jane Austen-adjacent” books—biographies, her letters, scholarly works, fan fiction, and so on. But I never encountered anyone I thought would also enjoy such a thing.

Then I met Jenny. She invited me to a Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday Tea. We wore regency-style dresses (easy to come by, thanks to Bridgerton), ate scones, and drank the aforesaid tea. We played Jane Austen trivia. I won, which made Jenny laugh and say she had expected this (am I that obvious?) and had selected the prize with me in mind. Said prize was a copy of Martha Lloyd’s Household Book from the Jane Austen’s House museum in Chawton, England (just picture my jaw dropping here). Delightful.

I knew that if I was ever going to invite someone to join me in a book club exploring Jane Austen’s works and related reading, Jenny was that person. Another friend newly made, Ashley, was also a fan, I knew. I proposed the idea to both of them, and a couple of weeks later, we met for coffee and determined the key details: how often and where to meet, what to read and in what order, and to whom we would extend an invitation.

Now, a book club needs no set formula per se. You do not have to meet monthly in the traditional way, read an author’s body of work in any set order, or have a certain number of people to consider yourselves a legitimate enterprise. Just do what you like and what works.

Jenny, Ashley, and I are busy moms, all homeschoolers with jobs, and our children are approaching or already in the busy middle and upper years of childhood. So we chose a location (a bookstore with a coffee bar, so that no one has the burden of hosting, at least for now), a first meeting date (far enough out to enable us to invite others and give us all time to read the first book), and decided we would begin by reading Austen’s works in order of writing (not the same as publication order in Austen’s case, Northanger Abbey being a wild card of sorts that was published well after it was written). From there, we will consider moving on to books like Jane Austen at Home, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, and her letters. We decided to each invite one or two people.

We also decided to keep the regularity of meetings somewhat flexible: at each meeting, we will choose the date, time, and location of the next one. This will enable us to navigate busy seasons so that the greatest number of people can participate in each meeting.

All you really need is one other person interested in reading and discussing the same author. Your author of choice doesn’t need to fall in the classics category, either. They just need to be someone you are interested in reading, and they need to have written enough books to warrant a bit of time spent reading their work. A Stephen King book club could go on for years. I have in mind several authors I’d like to explore via a dedicated book club after we have exhausted Jane Austen: Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Goudge, L. M. Montgomery (an act of pure charity, as too few people have read beyond Anne, and Montgomery wrote so many lovely books), C. S. Lewis. Alternatively, you could form a book club to read a series: Harry Potter, Narnia, The Lord of the Rings.

Also, just a note here: It’s more than acceptable to start a book club wherein you read and discuss books you have already read. Now, don’t gasp so loudly. Any time we add someone else to our conversations with a book, we experience the book anew. We are forced to examine it from different viewpoints. Like I said, I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s novels, some multiple times. I love them, so I’m excited to read them again and talk about them with other readers.

What would your ideal author book club be?