Jennifer Egan On GoodRead's Online Book Club: Can An Online Forum Really Be A Book Club?

Online book club seems like an oxymoron. Book clubs after all are supposed to represent a kind of social gathering where like-minded people sit down to discuss literary ideas and more often than not drink too much wine. That’s why I was skeptical when GoodReads, the social networking site based around books (Facebook for readers) announced it was launching its inaugural online-only book club this summer, kicking it off with the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (Vintage Anchor). To make it feel less impersonal, the site began the club with some good old-fashioned face time -- a Manhattan concert by the CareBears and a reading by Egan in the Housing Works bookstore in Soho organized by literary agency Lisa Weinert Consulting. But after that, the “club” was relegated to the virtual world. Last week Egan, who openly admits she is a Luddite who uses her computer mainly as a word processor, hosted an online chat with club members. Now that the two-month experiment is complete, the question begs to be asked: Was this a club at all or just a bunch of people reading at the same time? And is there a difference?

More than 37,000 GoodReads members added “Goon Squad” to their shelves (think wall on Facebook). It ranked it as one of their most popular books on the site for the summer. Since announcing the book club, Goon Squad became the 11th most read book on the site. The rest of the top 20 are more commercial books like the “Hunger Games” and “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Not bad for a literary novel, even one that won the Pulitzer Prize.

Qualitatively, engagement levels were high and some ran as intense as any liquor-fueled fireside chat.

“This was my least favorite chapter. First I was pissed that it had a science fiction-y feel to it and that I couldn't figure out who the characters were,” wrote a reader named Maureen about chapter 13 where Egan envisions a future filled with children who rule the world using iPhone-like devices. Some chapters had more than 1,000 comments.
Egan herself found the club to be an unqualified success. We chatted with her at its conclusion to try to answer the question of whether it is fair to call what they did an actual “club.”

Huffington Post: Do you think the GoodReads club ended up functioning like a real book club?

Jenny Egan: I feel like it did work. It’s always hard the first time doing anything. But more than 35,000 people registered, and for a literary novel that’s huge. I feel like it has been a huge boon for the book.

HP: You closed the club with a final live Skype chat. Did that make it feel like you were more properly engaged with the readers?

JE: The GoodReads guy, Patrick, was the conduit for the questions and people emailed him, and he asked me the questions and I wasn’t seeing the readers. We’re not there yet. Presumably they could see me but I do still feel like it was a conversation.

HP: Do you think we can call this a book “club” since the members never really meet face to face?

JE: I feel like this moment in our technological history is about redefining all kinds of terms like community and club to include a virtual component. I struggle with this enormously. I am old-fashioned I don’t have even have an e-reader. But this is about connection and people wouldn’t do these things if they didn’t feel connected. If book clubs are about people connecting to discuss books I think this meets the definition.

HP: What do you see as the value add in reading the book along with other members of the GoodReads community?

JE: The thing that has been so great about book clubs period in the past 15 to 20 years as they have emerged as a cultural force around reading is that they make it possible for people to talk to people about what they’re reading. In the 19th century when there was less media you were pretty sure that people around you had read the latest installment of “Bleak House." Now there is no guarantee.

HP: Who do you think your audience was in the GoodReads club as opposed to say members of Oprah’s Book Club?

JE: My sense is that people who are involved in GoodReads are real readers. Oprah reached out to people who aren’t didn’t even read literary fiction. What GoodReads has done is provide a digital meeting place for avid readers who want to communicate with one another. I think they’re the first.

HP: As an author did you feel like you were part of a club?

JE: I felt connected to the people who read the books slightly more than a person who picks up the book and reads it and really enjoys it on their own. I felt connected to them to them because of their connection to each other.

Comments

[ChrisRoberts]

04:51 PM on 08/13/2011

Twirling around like a buttercup, John David Redux gets his girl/boy on.

[bealebkk]

08:39 PM on 08/10/2011

I just spent some time rummaging around the site, well done I must say!
...seems like a good idea

[rwellsrwells]

10:12 AM on 08/10/2011

I added The Goon Squad to my "to read" shelf at Goodreads because of their come-on, which was that if you added The Goon Squad a book would be donated to a childhood literacy project. The scheme was advertised through facebook. I wonder how many others did the same, with no intention of discussing the book, or even reading it. Interesting how the come-on is not mentioned.

[jaguarmissing]

06:53 PM on 08/09/2011

i think there is something poetic about people reading..a solitary experience..and then commenting on it in a solitary way. besides, think of the time saved in ironing a shirt and pants and avoiding the need for gas money needed if going to a real book club.

[ChrisRoberts]

06:15 PM on 08/09/2011

A Pulitzer then? Really? Fragments (the expandable time line) in "A Visit from the Goon Squad," do not always make a whole and indeed there is a hole dead center in the narrative of this anti-arcing novel which goes on one-hundred pages too long. Music producer Bennie Salazar is straight out of B movie, his very essence done cheaply, one-dimensional. The other characters are em-placed by the bloodless Jennifer Egan for no other reason than to get the word count up, they are shadows of shadows and how is one to empathize with such a bit of nothingness?

The novel simply implodes when Egan delves into the Bay Area's punk scene. Showing nearest to no knowledge, the author surely relied, to say it politely, on Wikipedia. New York City and London were the hubs of Punk. The author hyper-pumps the California kick when indeed, two nothing Punk bands, "The Nuns" and "Crime" did San Francisco and San Fran did them by not showing up to hear them.

Why not visit the bookstore and pick-up a copy of...

Chris Roberts

[John David Redux]

08:29 PM on 08/09/2011

"Pick-up"? HAAAAAAHAHAHA. As much as Egan sucks, I'd rather read her in perpetuity than have to suffer through 500 words of whatever it is you write.

[ChrisRoberts]

10:11 AM on 08/10/2011

And yes, you read every word, good little follower.

[ChrisRoberts]

07:51 PM on 08/11/2011

Redux - Your mother gave birth to you and threw you out with the wash water. Your mother has three eyes, redneck style.

[Philip F Harris]

02:59 PM on 08/09/2011

While big names get lots of attention on Goodreads, there is an undercurrent of readers who look at books by the less known authors and publishers. At All Things That Matter Press we have had many of our authors find readers and received good reviews there.

[John David Redux]

04:27 PM on 08/09/2011

Way to get your shameless plug in there!

[ChrisRoberts]

08:05 PM on 08/09/2011

Redux - And you with nothing to plug but you incoherent ramblings. It's called the homeless bum effect.

[Philip F Harris]

10:06 AM on 08/10/2011

All in keeping with HP's interest in independent publishers! Thanks!

[AppleBaby]

01:40 PM on 08/09/2011

Is a book really a book if you don't read it in a paper form but in an electronic form, that is the question.

[John David Redux]

04:26 PM on 08/09/2011

That's never been the question, and it's not even the point of this article. Stay on topic.

[AppleBaby]

09:30 PM on 08/09/2011

Don't box me in.

[jaguarmissing]

06:55 PM on 08/09/2011

is a book really a book if no one reads it?

[AppleBaby]

09:31 PM on 08/09/2011

hhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, perhaps. to the writer.

[FlaviaDeLuce]

01:28 PM on 08/09/2011

I love GoodReads, I was just on there a minute ago :)

[carolfeldman]

01:23 PM on 08/09/2011

I have been active on GoodReads for a couple of years, but I did not know about this book club and can't find it on the site. Anyone with a direct link?

[John David Redux]

12:33 PM on 08/09/2011

I'm a Goodreads members, too, and I can attest to the fact that there might only be a few dozen people out of the tens of thousands that are intelligent people who take the time to read intelligent books. It's mostly just a tool that I use to categorize my library, the books that I've read, and my reviews. Otherwise, most of the people on it and their books are fairly useless. The rest read trash like Harry Potter, George R. R. Martin, and this.

The fact that both the writer of the article and the author refer to "Goon Squad" as a "literary novel" is really hilarious.

[jshop]

03:40 PM on 08/09/2011

"...I can attest to the fact that there might only be a few dozen people out of the tens of thousands that are intelligen­t people who take the time to read intelligen­t books....most of the people on it and their books are fairly useless." Your elitist attitude is reminiscent of the stereotypical antisocial comic book nerd who scorns anyone who doesn't know the most arcane minutae about a long defunct C-list superhero. Which is to say, "Your low self-esteem is showing."

[John David Redux]

04:22 PM on 08/09/2011

"Elitism" is just a byword for accusing me of having standards. God forbid we hang on to any of those. By the way, it's also hilarious that you would accuse someone of being both a comic book nerd and an "elitist" in the same thought. That doesn't really bode well for the kind of books you read, if you do actually read any at all.

Just because you want me to be interested in only arcana doesn't mean that I am. But thanks for the telling case of projection.

By the way, it's "minutia" or "minutiae." Please learn how to spell.

[ruthieriver1]

11:12 PM on 08/10/2011

In today's society, there is no trashy reads, all reads are good reads....Your pompous selfserving attitude is really a tantrum of child.....Ok, maybe there is some trashy reads, but they are fun, I never have cared what my children were reading, the fact they they were reading and not sitting on the computer playing games or commenting on really stupid post's, I'm ok with that..:)

[John David Redux]

03:08 AM on 08/11/2011

I'm not really sure my time is well served by responding to someone who 1) manages to contradict herself within the first three lines of her comment, and 2) says "I never have cared what my children were reading."

Well, God help them. Perhaps you should start. And while you're at it, maybe you should get your kids to teach you how to write proper English. The plural of "post" is "posts," not "post's." You might also want to look up "agreement, subject-verb." Thanks for trying so hard.

[dairine]

12:20 PM on 08/09/2011

As an avid GoodReads user, Egan hit the nail on the head: I know I can go to my profile, find one of my never-before-met-but-quite-well-read GR friends to have real discussion because, GR has "provide(d) a digital meeting place for avid readers who want to communicate with one another."

And I love it.

[Joann Vallo]

12:38 PM on 08/09/2011

Thanks. This is the first I've heard of this site. I'll check it out because books are my 'other life', :))