It's Tuesday night at Dundrum Library, and poet Conor O'Callaghan is under attack. He has just made the suggestion that that Jean-Dominique Bauby's writing in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is "a bit on the maudlin side", raising the ire of 12 people sitting in a circle around him. Vehement arguments are hurled his way until O'Callaghan retreats.
"OK, OK," he concedes, holding up his hands. "You win, you sentimental old women!" He's joking (we think) but there's nothing like a literary spat to bring out the worst in a poet. This is the first meeting of the Dundrum Library Reading Group in Dublin, the latest such group to establish itself in the area. Initiated by O'Callaghan, currently writer-in-residence with Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, in conjunction with librarian Marian Keyes, it is part of a growing trend.
"Reading is such a solitary act," says O'Callaghan after the meeting. "If you go to the theatre or to see a film or an art exhibition, you'll usually go in company and have an opportunity to turn to your companions and say, `What did you think?' A group like this allows you to bring that to the reading experience. Also, as writer-in-residence, I'm obviously interested in fostering the links between reading and writing."
Dundrum is not the only municipal meeting-house for the literarily inclined. In Wexford County Library, the reading group reputedly has to be ejected at midnight, still hotly discussing the text of the evening. And such groups are not just found in libraries: all over the country, in pubs, prisons and places of work, but most particularly in each other's homes, people are getting together to share the essentially private pleasure of reading.
As the popularity of reading groups grows, their influence spills into the public arena. The capacity of the reading-group segment of TV's Oprah! to create overnight bestsellers has been widely reported. On BBC Radio 4, James Naughtie's monthly book club attracts a regular group of avid listeners.
And cyberspace, too, has opened its embrace. Respected online magazines Salon and Slate are just two of the e-zines with a book club. More informal groups also abound on the net, often dividing into special areas of interest, from Restoration drama to black feminist fiction.
The workplace is an increasingly popular venue. One Dublin recruitment firm employee runs a book club at her workplace, which meets on the first Tuesday of each month at lunchtime. A smaller group also meets one evening a month for "theme evenings", in which people can choose from a list of books that pertain to the theme. She says: "It means we can have a mix of light and heavier reads so we don't put off people who don't read much. For instance, this month we are having a `chiller' night, for which we will split people up into pairs to read different books such as Stephen King, Frankenstein, and so on. The themes we have chosen so far for the months ahead are propaganda, women's literature, biography and a `trash' night to talk about books by writers such as Jackie Collins." The purchase of books for the group has been aided by a £200 donation from the company.
People getting together to discuss books is not a new phenomenon. A study published on World Book Day called Reading Groups highlights the Bristol Friendly Reading Society, which has been meeting continuously for more than 200 years.
Such groups found fertile soil in the self-improvement ethos of the early 19th century, according to a study by Dr Jenny Hartley, principal lecturer in English literature at Surrey University. Many Victorian working-men's clubs offered the facility. The women's suffrage movement also derived much of its initial strength from the reading groups of the day.
Today's upsurge has similar roots, taking off about 20 years ago in the US as an outgrowth of the women's liberation movement. Many groups retain recognisable aspects of 1960s consciousness-raising, says Hartley. They tend to be democratic, valuing everybody's contribution equally and actively resistant to the idea of a literary "expert" telling them what an author "means". They are attracted to fiction not just as a literary genre but as a tool to explore ways of living and being.
Perhaps that is why Reading Groups found such a pronounced gender divide in the composition of groups: 69 per cent of the 350 gatherings surveyed were all female, with 27 per cent mixed and only 4 per cent all male.
"The main reason people gave for this was that men don't seem to enjoy the process of discussion as much as women," says Dr Hartley. Others spoke of banning men, because of their fear that men would dominate, or that women would be less voluble and open if men were present.
When reading groups first began to take off on this side of the Atlantic, some commentators were sniffy. Robert McCrum, Literary Editor of the Observer, opined that this was a fundamentally American trend, typical of the self-absorption of that continent, and would never take off "over here". In a recent column, McCrum admitted he was "100 per cent wrong", that reading groups are sweeping the UK and Ireland and are "not just a girls' night out" (!) but a phenomenon that is having a profound effect on cultural life in these islands.
They are certainly having an effect on the book trade. Publishers such as Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins now issue reading guides for groups (available free at most bookshops) as a way of promoting interest in their back-lists. Prominent stands with "Oprah's Picks" greet you as you enter major bookstores, and many shops are giving discounts to local groups.
The owner of Dundrum Books, Liz Meldon, allows 10 per cent reduction to readers attached to book clubs. "I notice more and more groups starting up over the past few years," she says "It used to be mostly older people, but lately all sorts and types of people are joining, and it's having an influence on reading patterns. It encourages people to read more widely and to go for books that they otherwise might not read. Reading together seems to give them the confidence to tackle work they might hesitate to read alone."
Reading groups are not sexy in media terms. The province of maturity rather than youth, of women rather than men, of word-of-mouth recommendation rather than mass-market hype, they are in many ways the antithesis of today's pop culture. But as the phenomenon grows and its influence expands, it provides a firm riposte to those who insist our world is "dumbing down", and the written word is under threat from rival media: film, TV, video, computer games and the Internet.
After speaking to more than 1,000 avid readers, Dr Hartley rejects what she calls such "millennial lamentations". "Members of reading groups are so enthusiastic and keen," she says. "Their excited and engaged voices are a million miles removed from the grim soundings of our literary and social commentators. They read widely and well, and the literary fiction they favour is in good heart and financial shape".
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