ReadingGroupGuides.com

The Greater Expectations

Thanks to Noelle Lipa of Baltimore, MD and a fellow member, their book club now has an official name: The Greater Expectations. In this interview Noelle explains how her group chooses the titles they will be discussing and their desire to make meetings more fun by going to the movies or taking field trips that tie in to the books they are reading. Their current selection was inspired by the close friendships that have developed among members, despite the large age gaps and varied backgrounds.

Q: Does your group have a name and/or a theme? How long has your group been in existence?

A: Our name, "The Greater Expectations," came about just this past month, after a year and a half of existence. I came up with "The Great Expectations" because on my way to our last book club meeting I was thinking of how once again I had a lot of criticism for the book we read. Usually all of us are on the same wavelength in our analysis of books, and we always say we had great expectations for the book. When I threw out the name, another member extended the name to "The Greater Expectations."

Q: How many members do you have? How many men, how many women? What age are most of your members?

A: We have four members. We started out with five, but one dropped and we like the number we have now. All four of us are women. Two of us are in our late 20s and the other two are in their late 40s and early 50s.

Q: How often do you meet? Where do you meet?

A: We meet once a month, but that is sometimes deviated from depending on the circumstances. We meet at a Starbucks inside a Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Q: Do you eat at your meetings? What do you eat? Who brings the food?

A: Most members get some sort of drink from Starbucks and occasionally someone gets something to eat.

Q: Who leads the discussion? Do you use reading group guides?

A: We all take turns equally and just kind of go with the flow as far as taking the floor of discussion. When there are reading group guides available, we do usually try to answer the questions but we don't only stick to them for our discussion.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: Historical novels, fiction, classic literature, science fiction. We are open to anything except romance.

Q: How do you choose your books? Do you choose one new book at each meeting, or do you choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time?

A: We all have books in mind that we would like to read and sometimes get to the meeting early and pick out books to suggest at the table. If there is more than one book suggested we all vote on which one we would like to read that month. We keep a log of suggested books and sometimes get to them a few months later. At one point, we chose a theme for a few months in a row. The first was Jane Eyre, then The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, and then Emma Brown by Clare Boylan, a novel based on an unfinished novel of 20 pages by Charlotte Bronte.

Q: What were some of the best discussions or favorite books the group read?

A: We really enjoyed Emma Brown by Clare Boylan and The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. We always have very stimulating conversations; we have tended to be critics of the books and often discuss even the ones we don't like, analyzing why we don't like that novelist's style of writing.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: We have discussed doing some different things, like going to see a movie together and then reading another book that is based on a movie for that month's book club. We read the book Skipping Christmasby John Grisham, then we all rented Christmas with the Kranks when it was released on DVD and discussed it at our meeting. We read a book by Laura Lippman called In a Strange City, about the Poe Toaster in Baltimore (which is where we live), and hopefully one year when the date falls on a weekend we will go to see the Poe Toaster. Some ideas we haven't followed through on just yet, but we will be.

Q: What advice would you give to other reading groups?

A: Every group of people works differently, so it's hard to suggest things to a unique mix of people. A reading group has to find what works best for them.

Q: Do you have any horror stories, amusing anecdotes, or other special tales to tell?

A: The book club started out with five members. One of the members was a friend of mine, and I brought another friend and she brought two friends of hers. We all wound up dismissing the common denominator friend due to all our own personal circumstances; we are no longer friends with her but the other four of us have remained together. The one friend of most of us tried to get her two friends to start a new book club with her because she and I stopped speaking first, but they chose to stay with my group.

Q: Is there anything else unique or noteworthy about your group that you would like to share?

A: The four of us have a large age gap between us and come from different backgrounds, but we all share many of the same ideas. It's scary that sometimes we all are on the same brain wave and pick the same book at the same time. It's also strange how we've developed as a group and evolved away from the one person who introduced us all, even though I was the one to start the book club. We have come to share friendships as well as books, which is why we chose this month to read the book by Elizabeth Noble, The Reading Group, because it sounds quite like us.

ReadingGroupGuides.com interviews special reading groups around the world, spotlighting a different group each month. We hope that you enjoy reading about their experiences and might find some new ideas to try with your group. If you belong to a group that you think should be spotlighted, click here to answer our interview questions.