Skift Book Club Turns 2 and the Debates Continue

What does a grown-up have to gain from reading a young adult novel? Don’t those books seem simplistic or even juvenile once you’re old enough to drive? How can we hope to relate to a teenage protagonist?

We asked these questions when the Skift Book Club selected a YA novel for the first time. But this one happened to be exceptional: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. After reading it, everyone appreciated the complexity and gravity of the story, in which a young black girl is confronted with police brutality, but we did go back and forth about style. Some said there were too many signals that this book was for kids, like the fact that Tupac is considered old people’s music from a bygone generation, and some didn’t mind at all.

That was just one of many debates we’ve had over the last two years, and we’re still going strong. We weren’t able to meet every single month, but I’m proud to say we’ve read 17 excellent volumes to date.

A few members of the Skift Book Club at a local bar, at the tail end of our discussion. Photo by Sonali Sen.

How do we choose these masterpieces? We vote, but first we need nominations. Our preference is to nominate fiction by a diverse set of authors, opening our eyes to global issues outside the typical white-male canon with which many American students grow up. Any book club member can submit a nomination in our Slack channel, and if no one in the group has read it, it joins the ballot. That part is tricky because Skift Book Club Co-Founder and Senior Enterprise Editor Hannah Sampson reads just about everything.

Then the election begins. Usually, I jump in to whip up more voter participation and preach about how our ancestors fought for the voting rights we enjoy today. Then, the popular vote decides it. No electoral college here.

Many book clubs allow a different member to select a new book each month, but this seemed untenable as our book club grew in size and popularity, according to Senior Editor and Skift Book Club Co-Founder Andrew Sheivachman. Plus, getting people’s buy-in every month makes for a more engaged group, he said. That also means it’s a struggle to get your nomination to win — you have to sell it to the group.

“My nominations have never once been chosen,” said SkiftX Editor Alison McCarthy. “Which is FINE,” she joked. “I actually love it because it’s pushed me to read books outside my comfort zone.”

I asked book club members to tout their most deserving runners-up that lost their elections. For Sheivachman, it was Severance by Ling Ma, about a Chinese-American woman who works as an office drone while a massive plague sweeps New York. For me, it was The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú, the true story of a Mexican-American border patrol agent and the lessons he learned from refugees in the Southwest.

“How could Skifters not pick it?” asked Digital Marketing Manager Gabi Donchez about one of her travel-related nominations: The Black Penguin by Andrew Evans, a travel memoir by a young gay man in the Mormon community who embarked on an overland journey halfway across the world. Sampson fought hard for Lauren Groff’s Florida, in which the multiple personalities of Sampson’s home state figure prominently.

Looking to the future, it might benefit us to experiment with our structure, maybe being more open to older books and nonfiction, or even suspending the voting process. Voting might increase buy-in, but some book club members subconsciously don’t nominate anything because they assume their book will lose — in this regard, Associate Brand Strategist Dawn Rzeznikiewicz is not alone. “I should be less scared of rejection!” she laughed.

I pointed out to Rzeznikiewicz that our least popular book by far, Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson, was nominated by yours truly after many lofty promises. Big props to Sampson for making it her business to read it and have a rousing discussing with me.

One new member, SkiftX Strategist Sonali Sen, has seen the positive effects of book club echoing through various parts of her life. Sen reported that her leisure reading is more focused now — two books a month instead of a couple months per volume. She also is thrilled to have a stack of unread books waiting for her on her nightstand, which has encouraged her husband to read more, and she’s been inspired to get back into creative writing. Sen even said that all this intellectual exercise has gotten her to visit more museums.

If you’re interested in comparing reading lists, here’s ours, in chronological order:

1. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
2. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
3. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
4. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
6. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
7. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
8. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
9. Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
10. The Power by Naomi Alderman
11. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas *
12. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
13. The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman
14. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
15. The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon
16. There There by Tommy Orange **
17. Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar

Have a suggestion for a book that strikes you as particularly Skifty? Email me at se@skift.com and I’ll see if I can get it on the ballot.

*Skift Book Club made a field trip to see The Hate U Give at a nearby movie theater.

**Many Skift Book Clubbers borrow titles through the New York Public Library app, and since the wait for There There was especially long, Skift treated us to a round of books purchased in hard copy.

— Sarah Enelow-Snyder, Assistant Editor