Black figured a book group would be a good way to make friends in her new home. “Talking about a book is a quick way to get to know people, and how they think. I wanted to find a group of people who both liked to read and who would help each other weather the storms of life.”
But finding a group wasn’t so easy. Established clubs can be notoriously hard to get into, even in small communities. For years she’d asked customers at the shop and acquaintances around town if they knew of one she could join, but always got the same answer: Sorry, their group was well established and wasn’t taking new members. The pandemic made it that much harder.
Two years ago, with the world opening up again, Black decided to try a different tack. “I was a little bit desperate,” she admits. So, on February 13, 2022, she posted a query on the Facebook page Nice People of Newburyport:
Anyone interested in starting a new book club? I would love to meet monthly to discuss and meet some nice people.
She hoped to hear from eight or so readers. Responses started flooding in immediately.
I am new to town and would love to read a book together with fun, interesting people!
Totally interested! Moving to Amesbury within the week!
Hello I would also be interested! Thank you for setting this up! Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help
I’m interested! I’ve never been in a book club and figure I’ll love it or hate it!
In just a couple of days, more than 200 people responded, from all around the North Shore and beyond.
Black was stunned. The response was “a little daunting,” she muses. Rather than go back and forth online with everyone who answered her plea, she decided that the best way to proceed was to just open the doors of her home. She extended an invitation for a Monday evening in March to all who responded togather — in real life.
Once again, she was caught off guard. She assumed 30 or so people would show up, but on the evening of the event, book lovers kept streaming in. And streaming in. By the end of the night, more than 80 people had crammed into her little cottage. Most had never met each other.
“I think after the isolation period of the pandemic,” Black says, “it was an opportunity for people that might not ordinarily be so open to make new connections.”
Black set out cheese, crackers, and a dozen clipboards, each labeled with different weekdays and times. As the guests mingled, they picked a day and time and signed up for monthly meetings with one of the clubs.
To spark discussion at each group’s first gathering, Black had asked the proprietor of Newburyport’s Jabberwocky Bookshop to recommend a book. He chose Fredrik Backman’s novel Anxious People, a story of eight strangers thrown together under unusual circumstances who — guess what — find they have much in common. That night, Black sold all 50 copies she’d ordered.
I was one of the people who showed up at her cottage. After living in New York City for more than 30 years, I’d moved to Newburyport two months earlier, an empty nester looking to shake things up. I had been a member of a book club in Brooklyn for most of those three decades; our group of 10 women, all friends and neighbors, saw each other through births, deaths, divorces, career changes, the years our children drove us crazy and the years they made us proud. I hoped to create similar bonds in my new home.
At Black’s house I talked to two women who were avid skiers, as am I, and we three decided to sign up for the same night as Black, drawn by her openness and charm (and yes, her lovely cottage by the beach). Thus began our Monday night book club. Nine of the 10 of us, ages 50 to 70, have been there since the beginning.
Black later contacted everyone who’d signed up that night, as well as those who couldn’t make it. She made sure all who asked were assigned a group and that there was an initial host for each, then connected the members of each group via email. Twelve book groups emerged from her efforts that night, and most of them are still going.
“I do get messages from the other book groups telling me how much they love it,” she says, “but otherwise I’m only involved with ours.”
Freelance writer Nancy Langmeyer, who runs a Newburyport writers group, is also in one of the clubs that sprang up that night. Her club often hosts local authors such as Elizabeth de Veer, who took part in one meeting to discuss her novel, The Ocean in Winter.
“It’s been nice to connect the two groups,” Langmeyer says. “We didn’t know each other at the outset, but our book group has become really tight-knit.”
Our Monday group has also hosted authors, in person and on Zoom. Authors love to talk to readers, and book clubs are a ready-made market. We’ve heard insights about Lady Tan’s Circle of Women from best-selling novelist Lisa See, whom member Kathy Murray met through a podcast they both participated in. I invited my friend Jessi Hempel to discuss her memoir, The Family Outing, and club member Debbie Messersmith asked her brother, Turney Duff, to come in person to talk about The Buy Side, a memoir about his escapades working on Wall Street in the go-go 1990s.
“For an author, a book group is a gift,” Hempel says. “It’s where the magic happens. It’s an on-ramp to an intimate connection between people with a shared context.”
Our Monday book club brought together 10 strangers who have become so much more. We’ve gone to movies, joined wine clubs, and will soon start group pickleball lessons. Four members run together every week. Jennifer Welch, one of those runners, says our meeting has become her favorite night of the month.
Book club member Jane McDade says the club was “a godsend” as she dealt with frequent travels to Cleveland over the past two years to care for her dying mother and two ailing brothers. “The books got me through some bad days,” she says, “and the group was incredibly supportive.”
Black is still astonished at what she started. “I helped over 120 people connect,” she says. “It’s been very affirming, to meet so many people with so many commonalities, who were all so open to trying something new.”
She laughs about our own group, saying, “You all read the book.” Which, let’s face it, can be the most challenging part of any book club.
Catherine Arnst is a writer on the North Shore. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.
