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Oprah's book club - Making reading fashionable again

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In 1996 Oprah formed a book club for a few close friends and several thousand viewers. Her format is to select a book, read it along with the members of the club, and then discuss it in a televised episode of her afternoon talk show. By showing the members of her club enjoying a fabulous gourmet meal and sitting in a lavish library set, she silently declares that books and those who love them are enjoying life at its best.

But by setting up such a literary encounter with so many women, Oprah lit a fire inside us that still burns today. We love reading. We have loved it since we were young. Life, motherhood, careers, and doing the laundry got in the way of exercising our brain cells and enjoying a good book with friends.

Book clubs give us an excuse to have long, meaningful, and powerful discussions about important (or not so important) topics that we are passionate about. Book clubs also give us a chance to get together with old friends from college, along with new friends from work, enjoy a great meal and a great book. Along the way, we found that our brain cells were still capable of forming an intelligent sentence and our minds were capable of following a train of thought that wasn’t a part of our major in college.

When Oprah stepped into the book club world, she introduced many young people to the concept of reading and discussing books again. After World War II, followed by Korea and Vietnam, people were tired of thinking of such heavy thoughts all the time. The dissidents of the 60’s faded quietly into their tie-dyed middle age leaving a gap for some mindless music and dancing in the 70’s. When disco was in its hey day, not very many people were interested in reading books and then discussing them. Our society was busy having fun, much like our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were in the 20’s. But like so many parties, the guests all went home and the discotheques’ mirror ball was taken down and people once again are interested in discussing serious topics and expanding their brain power.

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