There’s a Book Club for That Even better than reading a book is reading a book with friends By Ross Howell Jr. • Photograph by Bert VanderVeen
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ant to find a local book club? A great resource is the Greensboro Public Library. I did my snooping at the downtown Central Library, where I met Amy Bacon, 30-something library associate, book lover and avid reader. “Book club participants, by nature, are voracious readers,” Bacon says. “I’ll read a couple books a month, maybe three or four, maybe five in a good month,” Bacon continues. “But there are people in the clubs who read a book every day or so!” Bacon acquired her reading appetite from her mother, Michelle Masters, an English teacher at Mendenhall Middle School. “She encouraged reading early on,” Bacon says. “She wouldn’t say, ‘Now you have to read for 30 minutes.’ She’d say, ‘Now you get to read for 30 minutes.’” J. K. Rowling was also a big influence. Given Bacon’s age when the Harry Potter novels were published and the fact that her mom was teaching in middle school, the books really resonated. “When they did the midnight releases,” Bacon says, “there we’d be at Barnes & Noble bookstore, waiting. Mom always bought two copies, because neither of us could wait to read!” Bacon’s a proud advocate for libraries and book clubs. “Every time I meet someone new, I ask if they have
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a library card,” she laughs. Bacon earned her bachelor’s degree at Appalachian State University in psychology, and her master’s degree in library and information science at UNCG. Shortly after she became a full-time librarian in 2018, Bacon was put in charge of the book club collection, curating it with two other staff librarians. It’s a big job. For starters, there’s the plethora of new releases each year. Bacon consults places such as Oprah’s Book Club selections, reviews and lists in The New York Times, or Goodreads for new books. Sometimes the leaders of local clubs will email her about forthcoming titles in their particular focus areas. And the library always tries to spotlight local and North Carolina authors. It’s not an exact science. “Sometimes we have titles that get really popular out of nowhere,” Bacon says. When the novel Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was released, it checked several book club boxes — good summer read, North Carolina setting, nature, coming of age. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
