Mother-Son Summer Book Club
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This is the third summer my sons and I will share a Mother Son Book Club.
My sons will be 13 and 15 this summer, the summer we will read Moby Dick. Many ask how we do this so they can replicate it with their own families or just for themselves so I thought I’d write it all down.
-Pick a book that even you as a grown up have not read. My sons don’t want me to be the expert or teacher. We are all coming to this book together as hard and confusing or as delightful and inspiring as it is. It is fun to discover together.
-Divide the number of pages by the number of weeks you have to read it. This is the number of pages you will read each week. If it helps you to then break it down by how many pages you need to read each day, then do that.
-Buy the same copy of the book. This way you are all on the same page numbers and can refer to passages together.
-Make it as happy and pain-free as possible. When my kids were little, their dentist wanted to make sure they were not afraid of the dentist. He used euphemisms such as tooth pillow and Mr. Thirsty to talk about the instruments.
Same with this. I do not want my kids to be afraid of literature. I tell them the reason these are classics, is because you can read them over and over and get something new. I reread Frankenstein every other year and it always amazes me. The first 2 times I read Pride and Prejudice; I didn’t get it all. That’s ok. That’s why we are doing it together.
-Have snacks. Last summer we made our book club smoothie day. We would either go out and buy a smoothie and have our book club at Jamba Juice or wherever---or make them at home. This made it a fun party each time.
-Try to meet the same day of the week. It just makes it easier for scheduling and doesn’t make someone feel like one week they had more to read than another. We meet on Wednesdays. Either in the afternoon for smoothie time or after dinner.
-Make it short and sweet. Our book club tends to run about 30 minutes. Seriously. 40 minutes tops. Their attention spans are short. Even this is a lot. It will get better as the book club goes on and they train their minds. This is also where snacks help.
-Format
-First, I ask if anyone had a favorite part. Throughout the week, we try to underline those passages so we can share them at book club. I’d love it if they read a part of that section aloud but even if they just want to share a summary that is fine. Everything is fine. Be encouraging.
-Does anyone have any questions? It is good if you as the grown up start that one. Maybe you were confused about something. “Does anyone even like Fydor?” “How is everyone related again?” “Why did Pip say….”
-We close each book club by reminding where we need to read up to next week and then reading the first page of the next section aloud together. This gets us right back in the story, enticing us to read further. It is good to hear the story aloud. Also, this means we already have one page read for the week.
-Do not underestimate your children. My sons make references to Scripture, Marvel Comics and real-life situations through these books. Literature comes ALIVE when we share it together.
-Each week we took a selfie of us and our books to share on social media. We did this both to celebrate the week’s reading but also to show others online that this can be done. At the end of the summer the boys were so proud that they have read one of the most difficult books to tackle. They refer to Zosima’s humility or Ilyusha’s friends often. We all know we didn’t get the entire book but we aren’t afraid of it anymore. We know we will read it again.
Books to choose from:
Our first year we read Great Expectations together. My youngest was 11 years old. I had not read it in high school. We used the opportunity to buy a gorgeous edition but this one would do too.
The first year, my oldest did not want to join us. So we had our book club in the car during his trumpet lesson. Instead of playing on our phones or listening to music, we used the time each week to talk about Pip.
Last summer we read Brothers Karamazov together. Yes, seriously. The boys were 12 and 13. One of my favorite moments was when my oldest who was not as into the book club and came mostly for the snacks, showed up one day and said “Dmitri is just a hot mess!”
I asked all my classics friends which edition I should use because I was overwhelmed. They agreed on this translation. Since last summer this translation has come out and been all the rage.
Mid-summer, when it was becoming clear that this was a thing, I splurged and bought Brothers Karamazov t-shirts for all of us to wear. Yes, we were that dorky but it was awesome. We’d wear them on book club day.
Another thing that was super helpful was to watch Jessica Hooten Wilson’s videos on Brothers Karamazov after each section. These videos are short but give a great synopsis and insight into each section. I would text the video to my sons after each section so they could watch it at their leisure.
After a British and then Russian classic, we decided this summer we’d read an epic American classic, Moby Dick. I’ve already purchased these gorgeous editions for the club.
Karen Swallow Prior has put out these marvelous editions of classics with demystifying prefaces and study questions for each section. These would work well in a group too.
If you have any online resources to add for these books please leave them in the comments.