Members Mingle and Find New Meaning in Book Groups

By Jake Ten Pas

Taking part in any book club is a leap of faith. Members wager the time they commit to reading against the taste and perspective of their moderator and fellow members. At MAC, it’s a good bet given the expertise and consideration put into all three of its book groups, and the dividend of expanded imaginations, knowledge bases, and relationships easily outweighs the risk.

“Each month we’re reading a book that might be 400 to 600 pages. That’s an investment, a couple of weeks’ time for a lot of people,” explains Chet Orloff, who leads MAC’s History Book Group. If such page counts are daunting, attendance hasn’t reflected it. Orloff says the group started with 50 members eight or so years ago, and now is up to 100, although regular attendance at monthly meetings is closer to 30, which helps keep the discussions as intimate as they can be.

“By and large, we have a lot of the same people attending, which allows everyone to get to know each other, although almost every time there are a few new faces,” Orloff says. “These are people who aren’t just interested in history. They’re interested in how to apply history to current-day issues in sometimes uncanny but very imaginative, innovative ways.”

“MAC’s founders were similarly inclined, and almost as interested in the health of minds as of bodies. Early Portlanders were seemingly obsessed with outdoor and athletic fitness and its role in supporting civility, morality, etc. Hence, MAC’s long support and interest in such things as the arts, fashion, literature, history, etc.” Orloff adds.

While the numbers at MAC’s other book groups might be slightly smaller — often more like 10 attendees — they’re similarly engaged with the world around them, and ready to explore new stories, information, and viewpoints to help them understand it.

“We have many minds who travel different ways,” says Martha Dixon, self-described shepherdess of the club’s Evening Literary Group. Like Orloff, she says her members run the spectrum of backgrounds and views, but all are committed to a fruitful discussion. “It’s often the depth of the character in a fictional novel that we end up talking about — the quality of how the author has presented the character or the story itself. If it’s too surface, it doesn’t generate much of a discussion. If there’s a lot of meat there, we pick at the bones.”

MAC’s most recently formed team of tome tacklers, the Big Picture Book Group, is led by psychotherapist Virginia Terhaar. The group came together during COVID, and after a year of pandemic life, Terhaar admits she was going a little stir-crazy. The friendly, intellectually fertile outlet of Big Picture alleviated some of the “social difficulty” she was feeling, and just might have been therapeutic for all involved.

“There’s a core group, and as we get more and more comfortable with each other, increasingly it becomes about personal relatability. We share more of our lives in ways that connect with the reading that month,” she offers. “I think we’ve been very fortunate. The people who come regularly are bright, motivated, and open. It seems like we’re all there to share, and along with our thoughts about the readings, it makes it both more interesting and a lot more fun.”

History of the Future

“Why do people study history? Probably the first reason is simply because it’s interesting, because it’s about people and events. Especially if it’s well told, it tends to draw people in,” Orloff opines, referencing a quote by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara W. Tuchman, who had a talent for filtering current events through the lens of history.

That explains Orloff’s passion for her writing; he views history not just as a study of the past, but as a lens through which to view the present and potentially plan for the future. He’s been a historian since 1975, when he first went to work for the Oregon Historical Society after serving three years in Afghanistan with the Peace Corps. He became the director of OHS in 1990, before transitioning to teaching at Portland State University and University of Oregon in their urban studies and architectural departments.

Since 2017, he’s shifted his attention to writing histories of prominent local families and individuals, as well as managing the Pamplin Collection of International Art and History. Which is all to say, Orloff brings a vast array of knowledge to his monthly book group meetings! While he didn’t start the History Book Group, he did take it over from former MAC archivist George Vogt within a year of its creation in 2015.

Chet Orloff leads the History Book Group.

“I think one of the attractions of this group is that we’re all meeting with other people who really like to read. Whether they’re doing it on a tablet or bringing an actual book along to class with them, there’s an appreciation of the act of reading. There was a food critic who used to dub himself an ‘eater,’ and by the same token, I consider myself a ‘reader’ because I love to read everything.”

Orloff’s home library runs the gamut from architecture and music to literature, gardening, and, of course, history, and he says that he thinks information can sometimes be easier to organize and retrieve in consciously organized physical collections than by searching the internet.

“A good example would be when, in the early 2000s, I was asked by the Oregon Health Authority to give a lecture on the history of pandemics in the state. I was able to go into my own library and say, ‘Let’s see. I’ve got this book on Oregon history, another one on diseases, and so on.’ I was able to pick from accounts by historians, doctors, and others who were really able to focus on each of their areas of expertise but might have been too buried in academia or a profession to step back and look at the big picture. To use an athletic term, my background, approach to research, and connection to the community at MAC allow me to really tee off here and drive home various aspects of history to those who are interested in learning it.”

Orloff was speaking about pandemics long before COVID descended upon the world, but that isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for historians. In fact, he’s always thought of the notion that “those who cannot remember the past — or who don’t read history — are doomed to repeat it” as fundamentally wrong. “Whether you like it or not, we’re going to repeat history because history has only certain things that happen in it. I mean, it changes by virtue of who might be making it and other factors, but by and large, we’ve seen Bidens and Trumps and all these characters over and over ad infinitum. So, I put less credence in that comment than I think a lot of people might.”

“On the other hand, the better you understand history, the better you’re probably going to understand what’s happening today,” Orloff continues. “It puts things in perspective or into context, and then you can start to think, ‘OK, this has happened before, or something like it has.’ Whether it’s a pandemic, a world war, or whatever, the basic principles are there.”

Unraveling the Yarn

Recently, when the Evening Literary Group attempted to read The Kindly Ones — historical fiction about the holocaust — at the behest of a member, reactions were less than enthusiastic. “Half the group didn’t read it! They read the first 30 pages and said, ‘I’m not having any part of this,” Dixon recalls.

“Nevertheless, we had a lot to say,” she adds, adding that the work in question is more of a starting point for a good conversation than an excuse for an academic exercise. “If you’re expecting college- or graduate-level talk, that’s not us.”

Dixon is a retired registered nurse, mother, and former leader of the largest Campfire Girls group in Washington County, all of which might seem to beg for the escape of time spent alone reading fiction, but she says that has nothing to do with it. “All my life, I’ve read history, and when I heard about the Evening Literary Group, I thought, ‘Oh, good, it’ll get me to read fiction, which I’d never really read a lot of.”

Former member Beverly Mackenzie started the group in 2001, and Dixon says she’d gotten accustomed enough to reading fiction by 2009 that she decided to take it over when Mackenzie left just because she wanted to keep it going.

Members of the Evening Literary Group: (back row) Brooks Coefield, Andy McNiece, Marcia Gerhardt, Constance Hammond, Kevin McClure, (front row) Norman Frink, Judith Perry, Martha Dixon, and Stacia Burt.

Anybody’s welcome, she says, including guests of members, and she invites everyone to introduce themselves upon arrival. How many people show up for any given meeting depends on what the group is reading that month. Conversations tend to examine characters, writing, and feelings about both, but also can include check-ins on more personal matters.

“Last meeting, it came up that I’m going to have knee surgery, and when some company called and asked if I wanted the ice machine, I said, ‘Oh, no, I’ve got plenty of ice packs,” Dixon says, smiling. “Five of the group members said, ‘No, get the ice machine!’ So, I called the orthopedic office and asked, ‘How do I take that back?’”

In addition to soliciting ideas for future reading by informal email nominations, occasionally she gets to set up something really fun, like a guest author attending in person to talk about their work.

“We try every two or three years to have a guest author, and that generates a lot of activity, and we get a big group of people,” she explains. In October, the group welcomes Dr. Victoria Sweet, author of the books Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing and God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine.

“Her brother-in-law is a member of our group, and like her, a retired physician,” Dixon relates. “Her visit will feature a discussion of what’s going on in medicine, and she prefers to have questions first as opposed to simply giving a lecture. I’m getting the group ready to do that and helping them read with intent. It’s going to be very interesting!”

While Sweet’s works are a very rare example of the group straying into nonfiction, Dixon reassures interested parties that 99% of their schedule is fiction-focused and generally just comes down to sharing the pleasure of a good story. That can range from Booker Prize winners to John Grisham, and Dixon plans to bring the latter’s Camino Island for the group’s Reader’s Choice meeting in July.

Another joy of the group? Dixon says it’s discovering new authors, which she also does by going to garage and estate sales, Goodwill, or her favorite bookstore, Annie Bloom’s. “I pick authors I’ve never heard of and try to read the back to see if it’s interesting to me.

That’s how I’ve come across some of the authors I’ve read and reread.” She then takes her treasures home and dives in. “If I like it, I might recommend it for a future meeting, and if I don’t like it, it goes right back in the bag and back to Goodwill!”

What’s the Big Idea?

“No one’s ever expressed an interest in true crime,” Terhaar says of the Big Picture Book Group. That might be surprising given the genre’s recent popularity and her flock’s area of focus. “We like nonfiction, but contemporary, not just history,” she explains, and rather than obsessing over the sordid details of heinous acts, they prefer to expand their minds with inspiring ideas.

“Originally, we were more directed in contemporary affairs, but we discovered with our ‘definition,’ it’s a little broader base than that. This month’s book is Astoria. That’s pure history, but it’s a new version of that story. Most of them are more contemporary issues like finance, medicine, politics, and also cultural.”

Terhaar says Braiding Sweetgrass, an indigenous perspective on a variety of current ecological phenomena, and Educated, a memoir about growing up on the fringes of Mormonism in rural Idaho, have been two of the group’s recent favorites. “We don’t really have any hard and fast rules.”

Sometimes, however, nominations are in short supply, or analysis paralysis sets in, and the group just wants Terhaar to make the call for them. “I’ll go down to Powell’s, stand there, and look at the new books and top sellers to get an idea of what’s popular and well written.”

No matter how the book is selected, discussions tend to be robust. Terhaar points to the conversation around The Code Breaker, about the Nobel Prize winner who developed the gene editor CRISPR, as being particularly engaging, and So You Want to Talk About Race, which the group read for Black History Month, as sparking difficult but important conversation.

Terhaar points out that debates over the big ideas in question have rarely become heated, which suits her just fine. Like the

inflatable bumpers on bowling lanes, her goal is generally not to have her guidance required. “I don’t want the moderator role in any strict form,” she asserts.

“Normally, it’s very easy and free flowing,” she says, and the group’s selections spur far more discovery and research than consternation. “Almost every book, there are a few members who say, ‘I didn’t know this before, so I looked into it further,’ or someone with history in that particular field will bring their perspective in. All of the different ways that we can relate to the material is what keeps this so fascinating.”