If you were to judge by the strong participation in the West Tisbury Library Classics reading group, the death knell for reading would seem premature. The statistics outside our small Island are sobering, though.
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Research Center’s Daily report that reading for pleasure has dropped by more than 40 percent over the past two decades, and that only 38 percent of adults read novels or short stories, reflecting a long-term contraction in dedicated literary reading. The New York Times has published multiple opinion pieces discussing students struggling to read or who no longer read, including “Reading Books in College: A Lost Art?” by Jonathan Malesic in October 2024. Yet every week, year-round, about 80 active readers in groups of about 20 over four nights join Dee Leopold, circulation assistant at the West Tisbury library. They’ve been doing so for six years, so on-Island we can rest assured folks are still reading.
I was fortunate to be part of the initial group, formed in March 2020, when so many of us were floundering as we tried to figure out what to do. Leopold recalls, “The pandemic forced us all to come up with ways to connect that were not in person. It was particularly challenging because it was winter, and people couldn’t go to places where they traditionally congregated, which includes the library. We thought about how we could forge connections that are vital to the year-round population, particularly if it was going to be on Zoom. So why not try with books that have stood the test of time?”
Signing up immediately, I loved that we jumped in with Jane Austen right away. Leopold says, “For many of us, during the pandemic, it was ‘intelligent comfort reading,’ but we didn’t stay up nights worrying about whether Lizzie Bennet [the protagonist in ‘Pride and Prejudice’] was going to be OK.”
Meeting every week with the same group to discuss the next section of a classic was cozy and comforting. But more importantly, the level of conversation was intelligent, probing, and stimulating. And with my fellow book lovers, approaching any novel in 100-page chunks is possible, including “Middlemarch” and “War and Peace.” And through the years, this has remained true.
Longtime participant Dodie Headington captures what we all feel: “Dee is an extraordinarily sensitive group leader. She creates an open, accepting atmosphere where people feel free to express their opinions or politely disagree with others. She sends us all deep research only a librarian can dig up, and is a very careful reader herself.”
Over the years, the range of classics has been huge, from Charles Dickens to Henry James. There have been Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Gaskell, Gustave Flaubert, E.M. Forster, and the Brontë sisters, to name just a few. We sometimes read a book that virtually all of us recall from high school, but we now view it through a very different lens, seeing things we completely missed. Although not initially excited to reread “The Scarlet Letter” (recalling my 10th-grade English class), it turned out to be, as Leopold says, “quite hot.”
And we go beyond authors’ most well-known works. For instance, there was Willa Cather’s “The Professor’s House,” featuring a middle-aged male protagonist whose ups and downs proved just as intriguing as life on the prairie in “My Antonia.”
Participating is low-pressure. You don’t have to join the discussion if you prefer simply to sit back and absorb what’s being said, and you can go à la carte, selecting which books you’ll sign up for or skip, and you can come back anytime. The only absolute rule Leopold is strict about is spoilers: Nobody is allowed to mention anything beyond the point in the novel we are at.
Now in its sixth year, the small initial group of Islanders of that first Austen group has grown to a mailing list of 110. About half the people are year-round Vineyarders; another 25 percent are seasonal, and the remaining are “friends of Islanders,” including my stepmother and a friend.
On any given night, you will find a range, from readers who are new to a book to professors with expertise in the author or era.
Member Marc Rosenbaum says, “There is a deep amount of knowledge within the group — several are teachers and professors — so there are always perspectives that open up my understanding of what the author was doing and the context in which he/she was writing. Even with the broad range of backgrounds, it is a very egalitarian gathering, without competing egos.”
Member Carol Salguero agrees: “What keeps me coming back is the expected stimulation of so many people whose insights often are quite different from my own. And that in itself is illuminating, interesting, and sometimes rather astonishing.”
Leopold focuses primarily on the 19th century, the age of the novel. Explaining her criteria for selecting a book, she says, “It’s something that can engage us week after week, and get some differing opinions going. If everyone feels the same about ‘Anna Karenina,’ that’s not fun. People are so willing to be brave and talk to each other in the group, so it’s not me lecturing.”
It is also fun to connect outside the group. After the pandemic, I remember running into fellow readers for the first time, exclaiming, “Oh, that’s what the rest of you looks like,” since we’d only seen one another’s faces on Zoom. Rosenbaum says, “Some in the group have never been to Martha’s Vineyard. One [of the readers in my group] is Lona from Kelowna, in British Columbia. She’s an Austen scholar. She was coming east for an Austen conference, and she presented her conference paper to a group of us at the West Tisbury library, and we had her over for dinner that evening.”
Speaking about why she loves the classics reading group, Headington, whose husband Dan is a fellow reader, notes, “Dee told us once that she never reads modern novels, but ‘lives in the 19th century,’ where we are delighted to join her. Dan and I have just moved from the West to the East Coast of Florida, and are facing making all new friends, but our Zoom book group will remain a constant in our lives, which is reassuring!”
For more information or to join, contact dleopold@clamsnet.org. The remaining books for 2026 include Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks,” starting the week of Oct. 5, and Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” starting the week of Nov. 30.
