Big fights break out.” Elizabeth St. Clair, a lawyer currently in two book clubs — one distinguished by the members’ interest in anthropology, the other, their interest in drinking — had her Waterloo in a previous club over Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses.” The group consisted of several couples, including Ms. St. Clair and her boyfriend at the time. Most people echo the sentiments of Gretchen Rubin, the author of “The Happiness Project,” who has founded numerous book clubs: “They are,” she says, “the joy of my life.” For many, a book club is an oasis in an otherwise hectic life. “It’s the great divide between people who actually want to read and discuss the book and people for whom the gathering is a social event, where the idea is a brief roundup of plot/characters/themes, and then — let’s talk about where our kids are applying to college.” All you need is one person on either side of the divide, Ms. Korelitz said, and that person is likely to get the boot. Three of Ms. Rubin’s book clubs are for “kid lit,” and people can react to Young Adult literature in particular like hormonal 15-year-olds: “The biggest division in Y. “I was invited to a group by a woman I didn’t know very well,” said Barbara Lippert, an advertising writer, “and I did the first reading — a so-so but still interesting novel about an academic in the 1920s.
