On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late April, eight men in Silver Spring, Maryland, gathered for a monthly tradition that began 30 years ago: a book club meeting.
The club is an eclectic group of men, mostly in their 70s — a former high school English teacher, a retired diplomat, an Israeli Army veteran — and they read widely. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Faulkner, Dostoevsky, J.K. Rowling. “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Atul Gawande. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin.
There’s a stereotype that men don’t read fiction. Indeed, in a 2024 survey, only 13.7 percent of men reported reading for pleasure in a given day (though women weren’t reading much more). The numbers have been plummeting for years. But this group defies the odds.
Whoever is hosting chooses the book, and on this day it was Michael Slott’s turn. The only rules are that the book is generally available at the library and ideally no more than 400 pages long. Slott broke both with his choice of the obscure 1974 science fiction novel, “The Mote in God’s Eye,” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (592 pages in some editions!).
“It’s my job to lower the bar,” Slott joked, though he made chili to compensate for the unpopular choice.
The discussion began with someone asking for a show of hands of who finished the book — about half had. This is slightly lower than their usual batting average. Many said they had trouble getting into it or felt it was too long. Scott Schneider noted that according to the book’s Wikipedia page, the editor had cut 60,000 words.
“They could have cut another 60,000!” Dan Mozena quipped.
Dave Main said the book was very much of its time.
“When I read a book, I think about when it was written,” Main said. “This is totally a Cold War novel.” He felt it was preoccupied with the concerns of the 1970s: the power of paranoia, anxiety about overpopulation. Mozena argued that the book didn’t age well because of the dearth of female characters and people of color.
Despite — or maybe because of — such criticisms, the discussion was lively.
“That’s always the case,” Mozena said. “We’ve never had a book that everyone said, ‘This is the greatest book ever written, end of discussion.’ People are all over the place.”
After about 45 minutes, Slott brought out leftover chocolate cake from his wife’s recent birthday, and the conversation moved on to other books, specifically the older ones that the group thought had aged well (they had all loved Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”) and the ones that hadn’t (many of them were disappointed when they reread Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”). Main said that he loved “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” when he read it 50 years ago but that he doesn’t want to revisit it in case it’s not as good as he remembers.
The book club was started by Schneider in May 1996 during a very different time in his life, when he was still working and had young kids at home.
“I can’t imagine how I did it,” Schneider said. He worked in the labor movement, advocating for health and safety regulations for construction workers, and his days were long; he left the house before 7 a.m. and often didn’t return until 6 p.m. “But, you know, one book a month, it’s not a lot to read.”
At first it was just him and a few neighbors — a way of getting people together. He and Bill Arnold had kids around the same age, so they met through the PTA; Ted Schroll and Slott lived on his street. Some people have come and gone, but the original members remain. Everyone attributes its longevity to Schneider’s commitment and organizational abilities — he maintains a list of books the group has read — the document is nine pages long, single-spaced — and sends reminders about meetings.
“I think the really difficult thing about keeping a book group going is picking good books,” Schneider said. His daughter is a librarian and often gives recommendations. When in doubt, the group will fall back on classics or prize winners, though that isn’t a foolproof method. “Sometimes I would pick things that won the Booker Prize or something, thinking, oh, it must be good,” Schneider said. “And sometimes it’s not.”
Since the group takes turns choosing books, the men often suggest something they’ve already read and liked, knowing they’ll have seven friends with whom to discuss it. Favorites have included Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns,” Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing” and “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by Nathan Thrall.
As the April meeting wrapped up, the group discussed who would host in May (Mozena) and what book they would read next (he chose “The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich, a ghost story set in a Minneapolis bookstore in which a formerly incarcerated Indigenous woman is haunted by an annoying and recently deceased customer).
Despite having had criticisms of that night’s book, Mozena made a point of thanking Slott for suggesting it, especially since he wouldn’t have chosen to read it himself.
“It’s worth taking the time to read books,” Mozena said. “I know that a lot of people are consumed by social media; that has its own strengths and weaknesses. But there’s something special about books. Books take you to places.”
Even if it’s just to a friend’s living room.
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