Would You Join a Couples Book Club?

On inviting husbands into your reading life.

I was chatting about books with one of my favorite independent bookstore owners, Jessica Kaplan at Bronx River Books, when she mentioned that she and her husband, Mark, are in a couples book club.

One of my eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean, you’re in a couples book club?”

It was a novel idea, and I suddenly had so many questions, namely: What would happen if Venus and Mars read the exact same novel, then sat in a living room together and discussed it?

This young Bruce Springsteen reminds me so much of one of my characters I’m currently writing. I had to include this photo here.

Well, Jessica said, a couples book club is pretty special, wonderful even. They started it in the mid-1990s as a way to keep up with good friends. Just like any other book club, they began choosing books to read, met on weekend nights, and offered plenty of snacks and wine. Some couples have remained, some have dropped out. Since the beginning, they’ve read over one hundred books together. “It’s very relaxed,” says Jessica. “Sometimes a husband reads the book and the wife doesn’t or vice versa, but it gives us something to talk about.” At the end of every book club meeting, the husband and wife team present five options for everyone to consider for the next meeting, and as a group they vote.

“Fascinating,” I told her. To which, she looked at me quizzically, and I elaborated. “I would just never think to invite the husbands to book club.”

This is, in part, because my book club, which has been going strong for four years, is partly a women’s support group. We opt for tea or seltzer, rarely wine, and everyone dives into the subject matter like we’re preparing to write a thesis paper. But as most overworked, stressed working moms, we end up discussing our own lives—and how they relate to the book we’re reading. For example, after our last meeting for the book We Are Not Like Them, we ended up in an enlightening (and uncomfortable) discussion about how our gender and race has shaped our life experiences. When discussing the novel The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff, we launched into a meandering talk about how much has changed for women since those days, and how not much as changed at all.

Attending our book club is like being at a Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy show where all of the jokes and stories and laughs are defined and delivered by women. In other words, book club has become a sacred space for sharing fears, discussing our pasts, trying to make sense of the present and never thinking much about how what we’re saying might be taken by our other halves. We are women being women, and that has enriched all of our lives.

And yet…

Many of the husbands of our members are avid readers, too, even if it’s mostly non-fiction. A few of them have even read my novels, which has meant so much to me, since many men write off my books as some inane sort of chick lit. Still, joining a coed book club seems like a particularly interesting social experiment, since it would bring such a different perspective to our discussions. Men and women interpret the world differently at times, and it would be eye-opening to hear a man making sense of the same text we read. (Granted, I was an English major and this may be a chance to nerd-out, but still, it’s undeniable that getting a co-ed group of friends together to talk would be worthwhile.)

Not to mention it’s another way to bring you and your partner closer together. Who doesn’t get bored of shared housework, endless Netflixing or talking about family nonsense? Let’s talk books together. Let’s get in a deep discussion about the themes in North Woods! That’s when it dawned on me. This group wouldn’t be part of our women’s book club; this is a different book club altogether. We’d meet less often, but we’d go into the meetings wanting the discussion to feel different.

“I’m in,” my husband said when I proposed it to him, then he laughed. “But it sounds like more work.” I reassured him that it wouldn’t be work, it will be fun! Still, would others see merit in the idea?

That night, I texted a few friends who I thought might be interested in giving this a whirl: “What do you think of starting a couples book club?”

My friend, Sam’s, response made me laugh out loud: “At first, I thought, ‘What are you talking about woman?’ But then I thought more about it…” A second friend liked the idea but wondered how we would find books that everyone would enjoy? A third response came in: This one was curious how we would meet up with the kids schedules so demanding; book club typically leaves one parent at home caring for the children.

But then I saw this response: “My husband has been dying to be in a book club for years.” This made me smile. Readers are readers.

So off to the races we go. I am officially going to start a couples book club. I have no idea what our first meeting will be like. I’m not sure if the dynamic will be right. But let me just say this: Let’s give the men a chance.

I’ll report back on how our first meeting goes. In the meantime, what books do you think are good ones for a coed book club? Do you think we have to change the types of books we read?

xo