Written by: Jenna Ulizio
I miss book clubs. Sure, I could just join one. But that’s kind of scary. Who else is going to be there? Besides, I’m so busy, it’s hard for me to make the meetings. There are always English discussions, but those can be hit or miss.
You know what else I miss? My best friend. He’s back home, and while we still call and hang out on my breaks, it’s different from when I could just get in my car and show up in his driveway 10 minutes later.
So, we started a book club. I suppose a more accurate term would be a “buddy read,” where two people read the same book at the same time, sharing the experience.
We picked the 2020 release Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. It’s a creepy, voice-y, twisty book. The novel takes place in 1950s Mexico, where a young socialite is sent to an isolated mansion to investigate whether her cousin is in danger, and while there, finds herself increasingly trapped in a web of secrets. My thesis supervisor recommended it to me, and it had been collecting dust on my best friend’s shelf. Together, we broke the book into chunks of about five chapters, and after each section there was a meeting to discuss what we’d read.
Spoiler alert: we’d both give Mexican Gothic two thumbs up. It’s not that reading with someone else made me like the book so much more. My opinion wouldn’t have changed if I read it by myself and kept all of my thoughts in my head. It’s how I read the book that shifted.
I still underlined passages I loved. I still paused to connect dots when the gothic mystery arose. But where I would have moved on, in a hurry to see how it all ended, here I had to stop, collect everything I wanted to gush over, and wonder what my reading buddy was thinking.
When book club was in session, our discussions were raucous and wide-ranging. I’d just taken a class on Mexican history and kept expanding on the historical setting. He immediately caught onto one of the novel’s motifs. I brought up “The Yellow Wallpaper” every discussion with increasing desperation. He had perfect recall of what the characters ate at every meal.
We shot theories back and forth, gleefully pulling evidence from the book. We picked apart the characters and the genre. It was like all of the best English class discussions I’ve had, mixed with the added benefit of both participants trying to get the other to laugh.
By the end of the book, I hadn’t spent much longer with it than usual. However, I felt much more satisfied with the experience. I felt like I had gone to that gothic manor myself and explored all its nooks and crannies. I’d unlocked rooms I wouldn’t have found by my lonesome.
So, maybe I’m a little fonder of the book than if I had read it on my own, but I’m not exactly complaining.
I’m looking forward to our next read. I advocated really hard for Heated Rivalry, but I got outvoted. I think I can eventually wear him down, though. Regardless of what we read, I know I’ll gain a new perspective and find new ways to love reading.
Featured Image Caption: I tried buddy reading for the first time and this was the result.