Last night I sat in on two of my first book clubs, one by phone and one in person. The phone one was fun and easy: it seemed a lot like the interviews I've been doing for the past few months, though it was a little strange to speak to a room and not know how many people were there or what they looked like.

I don't know what I was expecting from the in-home book club, but it startled me awake. It was at my mother-in-law's house here in Gainesville, and there was an enormous amount of food and wine. Everyone was a woman--not unusual, I think, for book clubs, as women are mainly the ones who most respond to this communal discussion format (not to mention mainly the ones who read fiction in America). All of the members there were extremely smart and articulate and very sweet to me.

But for some reason, I was really surprised by some of the questions. I should have been expecting some of the tougher ones, and after a moment of alarm was usually pretty able to answer them. What I wasn't prepared for was having to handle alternate interpretations of the book than my own--I had never foreseen having to concede my own expertise about Monsters when others clearly read it differently than I thought I had written it. And I never, ever, thought I'd have to argue for my interpretation!

Afterwards, though, driving home I began to see how it made a lot of sense: as soon as a reader picks up a book and begins to read it, that book stops being the writer's and becomes the reader's. It was a tough transition to make at first, but one I'm now ready to tackle--Monsters is no longer entirely my own, and has not been since the first reader picked it up and read it.

In the end, in a way, it's more beautiful that the book is a shared experience. And what I loved most about the book club is that these individual interpretations build on one another as each member adds her voice to the discussion. I have quite a number more book clubs coming up in the next few months--now, I think, I'm ready for almost anything.