Brandon’s Note: This series is all about getting to hear from members about how they made it to their first meeting and their experience in the space. I hope you get a direct sense of all the different paths that lead to book club and a first hand perspective of what it’s really like in the room. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

“I moved to Brooklyn in 2008. I'm originally from New Jersey and my parents are from Argentina. The town I grew up in was fairly wealthy and didn't have a lot of immigrants or people of different origins in it. I never felt like I quite fit, because my parents have accents and they were more working class, so it was a little different.

I wanted to move to New York because I wanted diverse perspectives, and I wanted friends from all different kinds of places, all different kinds of countries, all different walks of life. I started to open up and realize, there's a lot here that I don't know about. And now I'm in the city and it's up to me to get to know it. How are you going to get to know different people, or how are you going to find the things that you're interested in, and engage with different people? I remember, I volunteered for an organization that was teaching people English, after work, and that was really cool.

I went to the New School for a graduate degree in media studies and documentary film. Through whatever circles at the New School, I had heard of Yahdon and later learned that he had a book club. I really wanted to be part of a book club, but all the book clubs I saw didn't quite feel right. It might’ve been that I didn’t like the books. Then I came across Literaryswag and said, "Oh, this is cool. This is really, really cool."

December 2019’s meeting was What If This Were Enough? with Heather Havrilesky. I remember that I was so floored by the conversation that we were having that I wrote a bunch of notes in the book itself. There were so many things being said in the meeting that people brought up, that maybe I didn't even notice that passed by me and I was like, "Oh, my God. Yeah, that's such a profound thought about that."

One of the things I really appreciate about Book Club is how deep we go and how good everybody looks. The fact that that's not mutually exclusive, you can obviously do both, you can do whatever you want, really. I love to express myself with style. And I thought that space confirmed that for me. I was like, "Yeah, why am I boxing myself this way?"

I wore that cactus sweater, well one, because it was wintertime. That sweater was super warm and it was bright. The style prompt was instead of a Holiday sweater, wear your swaggiest sweater. I had leggings to keep me warm, and then you got to wear some cowboyish boots. It's like a Southwestern sweater. It's like my twist on the West.

I remember I walked away from that meeting and the question I was asking myself was, and I wrote in the book here, “who gives your life value and how do you engage with your own worth?” “How do you define your own worth?” To walk away from a book club asking those questions. That's just very, very cool and very wild. I loved it. And then the people, obviously. Everybody was cool and fun and nice and interesting and warm. The vibe was so good. Those are such serious questions for my first Book Club meeting. I wanted to expand my thoughts and this was happening.

I think about what we’ve read since my first meeting. We read underrepresented writers who write very interesting things. I think about Isabel Wilkerson. She's doing so much for our knowledge, and I feel like her works are going to be referenced for hundreds of years to come with how she's taken down history. It’s a modern textbook that's readable. It's amazing.

There’s also the intellectual rigor that people in Book Club approach the subjects. It isn’t "Oh, here's a book, and here's how I felt about it." The Club asks for people to think critically and deeply about what we’re reading, which is really cool.

I'm already really committed, so the diverse perspectives and the realness of people are probably the two main things that keep me coming back. The authenticity and warmth from everybody. That's what got me there and keeps me there.” - Kristin as told to Brandon

Kristin's First Book Club Meeting