The

CCM

Young women
follow in their
mothers' book
club footsteps.

ALLISON KAPLAN

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

More women than
men gather in metro
Detroit to schmooze
about books.

orry Oprah, but you weren't
the first to think of forming
a book club.
In Detroit's Jewish com-
munity, women have been
reading and gathering to
discuss once a month for
years. Thirty years — to be
exact — in the case of the
Geneva Club, nicknamed
for the Southfield street on
which most of the original
members lived back when
they formed the group as
new moms in their early
20s.
Now mainly West Bloom-
field residents in their 50s, with
children older than they were
when they formed the club,
Geneva members are amused
by the communal reading fren-
zy Oprah Winfrey stirred when
she created an on-air book club
last year.
To book club veterans like

Sharon Knoppow, sharing ideas
about literature is hardly a new
concept. Some of her closest
friendships were formed while
discussing thoughts about char-
acters and stories in more titles
than she cares to remember.
But if Oprah's influence —
combined with the growing
number of reader-friendly mega-
book stores — can convince a
new generation to socialize over
books, rather than at bars, so
much the better.
Back when the Geneva club
first got together in the late
1960s, the women were reading
for sanity.
"When we first got together,
it was a chance to get out of the
house," Knoppow says. "We were
all locked in with babies, and
most of us had just one car,
which our husbands would take
to work. It was a chance for
some intellectual stimulation."

time doesn't have to be limited
to gossip about men and make-
up.
"When I was a little kid, my
mom would have study groups,"
says 30-year-old Nancy Efrusy,
vice president of education for
Ruach, the younger women's
chapter of Hadassah. "But when
you call 20-year-olds to be in a
study group, its a huge turn-off."
When Efrusy changed the ti-
tle to "book club" and tried sell-
ing that concept a year ago, she
had much greater success.
"It's a great way to meet peo-
ple on a smaller, intimate level,
and [you] know you have at least
one common interest," says
Efrusy, pointing out that most
of the members were avid read-
ers even before joining the club.
"If you go to a bar, you don't re-
ally meet anyone."
So there you have it — book
clubs are a social thing.
Not so fast, says Efrusy.
Her club of about a dozen
Jewish women in their 20s
and 30s gets into some
c) tt-i, pretty serious philosophi-
s cal discussions about the
1 .5- fiction and nonfiction
3- books they're reading.
Detroit-area book clubs
are devouring everything
from current best sellers,
like John Berendt's Mid-

night in the Garden of
Good and Evil, to such
Jewish classics as The
Chosen, to Jewish history
books, such as The
Mezuzah in the Madon-
.na's Foot by Trudi Alexy.

Some clubs pick books
written by Jewish authors
or which are focused on
Jewish subjects. Others go
strictly for titles by female
authors. And then, there
Oprah Winfrey started a nationwide book craze
are those that read just
with her on-air club.
about anything of interest
to members.
Today, their twenty and thir-
"There is a certain level of
tysomething daughters might
be more career-oriented, but comfort in things we choose, that
they still crave time for girl talk. we already know are appealing
And because of book clubs, many to us," says Hannah Moss, a
are finding that female bonding member of two book clubs in