Fulton Book Club marks a half-century of reading, friendship

FULTON – It was early 1973 when Fulton resident Barbara Mask – who at the time had left the workforce and was a stay-at-home mother of two little boys – was looking for a way to stay connected to others.

Her idea? To create a book club with eight other women, each one of whom had a connection to the teaching vocation and a love of reading.

Her plan worked: Five decades, scores of life changes and about 450 books later, Mask’s group, the Fulton Book Club, continues to meet each month.

On Thursday, book club members Kathy Wolf, Connie Koehn, Jane Orman Luker and Carol Kolk joined Mask at her home to celebrate the group’s more than 50 years of discussing books that have included everything from “Sybil and the Joy Luck Club” to “The Great Gatsby” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“I did that purposely,” Mask said of the number of teachers in the group that also includes Karen Trichardt, Betty Bolton, Nancy Kolk, Dottie Leininger and Tina Leemhuis. ”I selected the first group, and I did teachers just because we all would have some basic background in literature, and I just knew them.”

Of the original members, Mask and Jane Orman Luker are the only two who remain in the group, which through the years has lost members who have moved and others who have died. But along the way, they have picked up other longtime members eager to share in the camaraderie of reading and reviewing that month’s book selection.

The group has a very streamlined process; a prepared spreadsheet assists in look-ahead planning.

The group meets once a month, and each date is assigned a discussion leader, who selects the book title that members will read before the meeting.

The discussion leader provides information about the author and leads a review and discussion about what members liked or didn’t like about the book, what they learned and the perspective they gained.

A hostess also is assigned to each meeting date. The hostess opens her home or picks the location for the meeting.

Mask said it works out well when the group has nine members because, with the summer months off, each member annually will host once and review once. A group of nine members also lends itself to spirited discussion while at the time keeping it from being overwhelmed by too many participants.

It’s when they don’t like a book that they seem to have the most discussion. That’s when they can bring out the seashell Mask’s mother gave to Mask years ago upon hearing the passion that surfaced during the book club’s discussions.

Mask shared the story about how easy it is for a passionate group to start talking over each other. When that happens, the seashell can be used to keep order; the person who is holding the shell is the only one who is allowed to talk at that time.

The women said the discussions that follow allow each to gain a new perspective.

“That’s what makes the discussion so interesting,” said Wolf, a member since 2002. “That’s why I like it. Because I’ll have one thought – and ‘Blindness’ comes to mind – I love this book, thought I had a grasp of it, went to the discussion, and realized I missed a key component of it. And it just changed the book.”

There are books all of the members enjoyed, such as “The Secret Life of Bees.” But the process also leads each member to dive into books that otherwise would never make their way from a bookshelf and into that reader’s hands.

Kolk, a Fulton Book Club member since 1987, said the group helped her to develop a love of reading nonfiction, since fiction used to be her first choice of genre to read.

“To me, it’s that someone else has chosen this – it is not a book I would have chosen myself,” said Kolk, who pointed out that the group read “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood 37 years ago.

The group reads all genres, as well as fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry and sci-fi.

“Sometimes you really enjoy it and you’re surprised, and sometimes you don’t enjoy it, but then in the discussion you gain some appreciation,” said Koehn, a member since 1976.

As she looked around the room, Mask reflected on how her original purpose for creating the group has carried on through today.

“I had two little children home, I had been in graduate school and I was working, and all of a sudden I was home and I was missing that classroom activity and liked to read and to discuss things,” she said. “And 50 years later, I still find it gratifying.”