If you read every month how to change your life, you’d never be able to help yourself, a host of the Shelf Improvement book club said, adding, “It gets a little much, and you don’t end up actually following all the advice.”
The Shelf Improvement book club, hosted at Cicada Books, meets to read anything that provides self-help. However, the club ventures outside the typical scope of self-help.
Katie Norman, co-host of the book club, said the group interprets the genre of self-help a little differently than the corporate idea of what self-help is.
“We often do a range of stuff, so we’ll do memoirs sometimes, especially last year, we read a memoir called ‘Group’ that’s about group therapy that was just this woman’s experience in group therapy that was really sort of intense,” Norman said. “We read a memoir called ‘What My Bones Know’ last year that was about a woman with PTSD that was a lot more serious, so we interpret the self-help prompt pretty broadly.”
The group has a smaller attendance but a consistent one that has a close-knit attitude. Norman said other clubs tend to have people come and go, but the Shelf Improvement group has continued to have its core group of around five people.
“I like having our sort of core group in a way that is a little bit less than the other clubs because I do think that it feels a little bit more like a community space,” Norman said. “There’s an amount that it is sort of about catching up with friends and what’s going on in your life, and in some ways, it’s just nice that this is sort of an opportunity to talk about sometimes like heavier stuff that you don’t necessarily just get into with people that you don’t know that well.”
Norman said the book club is a space that welcomes anyone who’d be interested in stopping by Cicada Books. They always want to foster a space that is comfortable for anyone who stops by the bookstore and the clubs.
“I would say it’s kind of a combo support group and b—- session. Positive opinions and also negative opinions on the books are welcome. We try not to get derailed, but it does happen a little bit,” Norman said. “I think that it’s if you want somewhere to talk about the heavier stuff or the hardest stuff that you don’t have a good outlet for, you know, we will probably tell you that you should go to therapy, but also the meeting is good.”
Cicada Books has many different book clubs to offer. Whether you want to talk about banned books, foodie favorites, books versus movies or you’d like to have a little bit of shelf improvement, every club is open to everyone.
Soleil Woolard can be contacted at [email protected].
