Having a men-only reading club helps guys become open books

MINNEAPOLIS — The book club's first reading choice "triggered something that all of us had to get off our chests," said a founding member.

"We're all going through a cycle of life where there's a lot of vulnerability," said another. "This is a way for me to come to a group and be vulnerable."

Added the first member: "I think the whole book club is a pretext for us talking about our lives."

Typical touchy-feely book-club talk, except for one tiny detail. The members are named Jon and Naveen, and their club is an entirely male province, a fraternal order with no girls allowed, not even tangentially.

"One of our rules is that we don't read books that our wives suggest," said Eric Erickson, another denizen of the five-man coterie that meets every five to six weeks to talk mostly about books but also their lives.

Erickson's club, founded by Denny Haley and including Brian Longley, Naveen Sharma and Jon Klaverkamp, is a rarity. One reason: 58 percent of American readers are women, according to a 2008 study by R.R. Bowker, a leading provider of global book information.

"Men's book clubs are far, far the minority, said Hans Weyandt, co-owner of Micawber's Books in St. Paul. At a recent Micawber's event for book-club coordinators, "it was like me and 40 women," Weyandt said.

Still, groups such as the one started by Haley, and another co-founded by Minneapolis' John Bellaimey, share a lot with women's or mixed-gender clubs: a love for reading and a penchant for using the books as jumping-off points to talk about their lives.

In fact, the two men's book groups might be more different from each other than they are from similar women's clubs. Haley & Co. talk very intimately about their individual lives, but never about work or even their families. "I don't know what kind of car anyone drives, or anyone's vacation places," Haley said.

The Bellaimey bunch shares pretty much everything. "We talk about politics, our families and movies. In August we don't read a book; we go to a movie," said Bellaimey. "We go to each other's weddings, to each other's kids' bar mitzvahs, and the funerals of loved ones. We get together once a year with spouses and sometimes kids.

"During the early years when the 'Harry Potter' books came out, we had kids of Potter age, and we would have a potluck for us and our families. We let the kids discuss the books, and the kids remember that very fondly."