Reading Group Reignites Student’s Passion for Literature
By Emelia Gibbs
My favorite thing to do as a child was to read. All day, every day, I would read nonstop, immersing myself in fantastic worlds, engaging with interesting ideas, and expanding my mind as much as humanly possible. However, as I grew older and school became more demanding, my spare time and motivation to read diminished. By the time I entered college, reading for fun had become a rare pastime, a treat often spoiled by relentless academic articles and textbooks. I enjoyed the class readings at times but truly missed the thrill of a good book.
During my third year, my dear friend Mariel told me she was joining a Jane Austen reading group at the Blue Ridge Center. As an avid fan of the 1995 BBC miniseries and 2005 film versions of Pride and Prejudice, I jumped at the idea as well. Since enrolling in the School of Commerce, I no longer read classic literature in my classes, and I was craving some good literary analysis. The experience was incredible, and we all loved Pride and Prejudice so much that we stayed to read a second book, Sunrise on the Reaping, one of my most hotly anticipated releases of the year. I absolutely loved these books and the ability to debrief them with other students who were just as invested as I was. The communal aspect elevated the experience tenfold, and I felt my spark for reading begin to return. Throughout the semester, I spent more time reading for fun than I had ever before during my time at UVA. It was the Blue Ridge Center’s reading groups that rekindled that great love of mine.
When the Blue Ridge Center presented Mariel and me with the opportunity to lead a reading group of our own, we were ecstatic and immediately set to work brainstorming our theme and books for the semester. I was eager to lead and read with Mariel, to whom I had been attached at the hip since my first year at UVA. As best friends, roommates, sorority sisters, and Commerce classmates with similar tastes in literature, I knew that leading alongside her was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. We decided on The Handmaid’s Tale with a dystopian fiction theme. The show’s finale and the political atmosphere in America had brought the novel back into our country’s collective consciousness, and, although we had both read it in high school, we yearned to reread it with new lenses as college students. We also settled on Children of Men and A Clockwork Orange to round out the semester.
I have thoroughly enjoyed leading this reading group. Many of my close friends joined, and I’ve made new friends as well. It has offered us the perfect way to engage deeply with the books, gain new perspectives, and debate and discuss our takeaways. Furthermore, I didn’t expect to learn so much from leading a reading group. Facilitating weekly discussions pushed me to become a more intentional listener and thoughtful communicator. I practiced guiding conversations without dominating them, making space for quieter voices, and creating an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their interpretations, even when they differ from the majority opinion. I know I’ll carry these leadership skills with me long after leaving UVA, when I’m working on teams, running meetings, and simply striving to build community wherever I go.
As Mariel and I enter our final semester before graduation, we’re excited to continue our fiction reading group and find even more students whose joy of reading we can spark once more. For anyone who loves to read, eat delicious free food, meet new people, and analyze, debate, and discuss interesting ideas, we hope to see you at our meetings in the spring as we explore horror and gothic fiction!
