Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Alone!

Friends Don't Let Friends Read Alone

Friends don’t let friends read alone, at least that’s what Baldwin Public Library’s Kathryn Bergeron believes. Bergeron is Baldwin’s systems librarian and also acts as the main facilitator of the BPL’s “Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Alone” book club.

The club launched late last spring as the “Young Professionals Book Club” and was originally designed to draw in the college crowd. Though the library has several programs designed to engage the community’s older and younger populations, Bergeron felt the college-aged demographic needed to be addressed.

“College students come in to study and to get books and DVD’s and we wanted a chance to reach out to them,” noted Bergeron of the original idea behind the club. “There had been a lot of talk about an evening book club… so we kind of started there but we wanted to let it evolve a little bit and see what it wanted to become. Book clubs are kind of their own entity… they have their own personality.”

By fall that personality was taking shape, and the evolving book club changed its name to “Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Alone.” “Most of the people who are in it are still young professionals, but it’s not limited to anyone,” shares Bergeron. “Anyone who wants to show up is more than welcome to. I think that the venue and the time lends itself more to young people, but we have other people… and I’m more than happy to see them.”

That venue is the Zuma Coffee House in Birmingham where the book club meets one Tuesday evening each month. The coffee house is a natural draw for the trendy set, but Bergeron also chose it as a show of community support. “We’ve worked with Zuma in the past and they’ve been very supportive of us… and we wanted to do something to give back to them… . We’re really grateful to Zuma for hosting us every month.”

So how does Bergeron make her title selections? “We have a collection of book club books, first of all, at the library and we pull from that… . We try to change up the books so that, yes, you might have one that is incredibly depressing but then the next one is going to be something probably more fun or more happy, so you can kind of juxtapose the books against one another.” The group just finished The Undertaking by poet Thomas Lynch  and will discuss Alexander McCall Smith’s  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for their February title.

Overall, Katherine Bergeron is pleased with the success and growth of the book club. “… I’m really glad that it is something that we were able to try and I think that it’s worked out very well so far and I hope that it continues to blossom.”

The “Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Alone” book club is open to all and will meet at Zuma Coffee House at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 to discuss The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Books are available upon request at the Baldwin Public Library.

*Support your local bookstores, libraries, and universities. It matters.

-Post by Megan Shaffer

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