Grab Your Bookmark and Your Grudges: Inside Luverne's Most Opinionated Monthly Meeting

The second Thursday of every month, the library's back meeting room fills with folding chairs, a coffee urn, and opinions.

This month's selection was Where the Crawdads Sing — Delia Owens's blockbuster about Kya, the "Marsh Girl" of coastal North Carolina. It has sold millions of copies, been adapted into a movie, and, as it turns out, split the Luverne book club clean down the middle.

"I could not put it down," opened Marilyn, before anyone had even sat down. "The nature writing alone."

"The nature writing," countered Gary, setting down his cup with the gravity of a man about to deliver a verdict, "was lovely. The murder trial was not."

And we were off.

The Case for Kya (and the Case Against)

The pro-Crawdads camp praised the atmosphere. Several members had actual experience with marshland from trips down south and vouched for Owens's descriptions of birds, tides, and gull-motivated loneliness. Janet called it "the first book in years where I underlined sentences just for the way they sounded."

The opposition wasn't buying it. Their complaints, in no particular order: the courtroom drama felt pasted on, the timeline jumps were confusing, and — Gary again — "no girl raised alone in a swamp talks like a poetry professor by age fifteen."

Marilyn's rebuttal: "It's a fable, Gary. Fables don't need to pass a realism test."

The vote at the end of the night: seven loved it, four didn't, one abstained because she "liked it but couldn't defend it." In book club terms, that's a near-riot.

Why We Do This Every Month

Here's a secret from the people who run these programs: the book is almost secondary.

What a book club actually provides is a standing appointment. A reason to leave the house in February. A place where the retired teacher, the new dad, the farmer who reads only audiobooks during harvest, and the woman who joined "just for the coffee" all sit in the same room and disagree about something that doesn't matter even a little — which is exactly the kind of disagreement that makes people friends.

In a town our size, that's not a small thing.

Want to Start Your Own? Here's the Short Version

If our group has inspired you (or made you want to argue with someone), starting a club is easier than you'd think:

1. Pick a consistent time. Same day, same time, every month. Flexibility kills book clubs.
2. Keep it to 8–12 people. Big enough for varied takes, small enough that everyone talks.
3. Choose books that spark debate, not unanimous love. Unanimous love is pleasant and forgettable. Ask our Crawdads crowd.
4. Let different members pick each month. Ownership keeps people showing up.
5. Ask us for help. We can pull multiple copies through interlibrary loan, suggest titles, and reserve the meeting room. That's genuinely part of our job.

A Brief History of Our Most Heated Meetings

For the record, Crawdads doesn't crack our all-time top three:

• The Olive Kitteridge Incident (2016): Half the room found Olive abrasive; the other half found her "the most honest character in modern fiction." One member left early. She came back the next month. We don't discuss it.
• The Road, 2019: The debate wasn't about the book's quality — everyone agreed it was great — but about whether anyone should ever read it. Verdict: yes, but not in winter.
• The Help, 2022: Our longest and most valuable conversation, and the night we realized we needed to add more diverse voices to our yearly list. We did.

The club is always open to new faces. Next month's pick is posted at the front desk. Bring a book, bring a grudge, bring a quarter for the coffee fund — we'll supply the folding chairs.