Last summer, I learned about a book club for the homeless, founded in Boston.  Peter Resnik, a downtown lawyer, made it a habit of cutting through Boston Common on his way to work. Each day he would see a homeless man named Rob and they began having daily conversations about jokes, sports, and eventually literature.  Peter loaned a book to Rob, who in turn shared it with other homeless people. Before long, a book group was created, with members meeting each Tuesday to discuss stories while snacking on doughnuts and coffee.

The meetings are described in an Boston Globe article by Jenna Russell:

When talk flows at the book club, the dynamic that emerges is pure and powerful.  The members are equals, linked by what they read and respected for their insights.  Their discussions…are both a stimulus and a respite for people used to staying focused on survival – where to sleep and how to stay dry – rather than the themes and symbols of fiction.

This description very much appealed to my own sense of what a book group should be about – that the group should use the literature as a stimulus for discussion and sharing rather than something that needs to be critiqued and dissected.  I sent an e-mail to the group and received a response from Ron Tibbetts, a Beacon Hill church deacon and longtime homeless outreach worker.  Ron has created a nonprofit group, the Oasis Coalition, and has replicated the idea of a book club for the homeless.  I offered to donate copies of my book Still Blinking and he wrote back, accepting my offer.

The books are now in the mail and I look forward to hearing about what kinds of interesting discussions the stories might generate.  Ron says that the idea of a book club for the homeless is spreading across the country and that he plans to set up a blog to keep people informed of the progress. I’ll share that information on this blog when it becomes available.

The group had only four members, all women, and they would carefully choose a book – or maybe two books of similar styles – that were known for their rich, full, descriptive use of language. The books were generally written by women who wrote in an earlier time, before spare, efficient language became the vogue. They were the kinds of books that you wouldn’t read on the beach or before falling asleep because you had to work a bit and discipline yourself to savor each line.

The women would meet monthly and take turns reading a passage from the book aloud. The next reader would then take a turn and they would pause from time-to-time for discussion.

Thinking about this group reminded me of an earlier post called Bring Your Extension Cord, about a young women who always brings her extension cord with her when she goes to Starbucks so that no matter where she is sitting, she will be able to plug in her laptop and do her homework for her college courses. Even though the people around her are all strangers, she feels that they will help keep her on task. If she does her homework in her apartment, there are too many temptations and distractions and she will surely find something more interesting to do than her homework.

I’m always thinking that one of these days I’m going to read some poetry, but I know that it will require me to slow down and absorb the language, the symbolism, the patterns of rhyme and rhythm. I’m somewhat of a slow reader, and when I read a book, I’m almost always aware of how many pages I’ve read, how many more I need to read until I’ve finished, how quickly it’s going, what book I’m going to read next. Like life, it’s very hard to just be in the moment, pay attention to each page, each sentence, each word.

My friend’s book group – like the Starbucks customers who were unwittingly helping a student to get her assignments completed – was a community which was helping its members to slow down and pay attention. They would stay with the same book for months because it wasn’t about finishing a book, hashing it over and moving on, but about being with the book for awhile, living with it, savoring every word.

I plan to try this approach with my men’s book group, but know that it will take a little tweaking in order for it to work. I’m thinking that a book like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will not only have the rich language required, but the adventure, action, humor, and political commentary that might be necessary for the group to accept such a novel approach.

In the meantime, I think I’ll practice my slow reading.