UNC Asheville students keep in touch digitally, inspired by the online class format widely adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“One of my goals was to be able to stay connected with people from Asheville. Now, since I live in Vermont, I feel very disconnected from all of my buddies. I also wanted to be able to read books that I otherwise might not have picked up or find books that some of my friends will enjoy,” said Lillian Barnard, a 20-year-old student at Vermont Law School and recent UNCA alumnus.
As the pandemonium of Hurricane Helene reaches past and present UNCA students across the country, Barnard turns to the comfort of digital book clubs using Google Meet, Google’s video conferencing service, to keep up with friends during a new array of unprecedented times.
“I’ve never been a part of a book club and I actually really like doing it digitally. I have an issue where if I don’t feel like leaving my house, I’ll just cancel and be like “Oh, I can’t come today.” When it’s online it’s more convenient,” Barnard said.
Kiersten Lankford, a 21-year-old student studying Psychology at UNCA, attends the same digital book club as Barnard but from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“One of my goals was keeping in touch since I was one of the people that got separated from the hurricane,” Lankford said.
Lankford said the other two book club members have been displaced from their family homes in North Carolina to Tennessee and Michigan. She said the book club meets every week, but the meeting is flexible if some people cannot attend on their typical meeting day.
“After Helene, I have books on my phone now which I would never really do. I was very adamant about wanting paperback books,” Lankford said. “Having a book on my phone I can just read at any given point, anywhere, is so good because now I’m training my brain. If I’m in a nail salon and waiting, I’m reading on my phone.”
Lankford said books were a godsend after Hurricane Helene hit. She said reading together mellowed her and her friends fear out while the phone lines were down in Weaverville pre-evacuation.
Bethany Richards, a 26-year-old registered behavioral technician from Boone, North Carolina and recent UNCA graduate, said the opportunity to join a book club presented itself before, but she wasn’t compatible with the format of book club reading.
“I go some weeks without reading at all and I go some weeks where all of my free moments go towards reading. There is no schedule for it,” Richards said. “I am a very slow reader.”
Richards said she was thinking about branching out more, but the only reason she hasn’t is because there’s not a bookstore readily available in Boone.
“I feel like there is something more magical about being able to turn a page. You can watch your progress easier than you can on a Kindle,” Richards said. “I just like the feeling of the paper and the weight of a book in my hand.”
Lankford said before joining a book club, many people in her life were not readers.
“It was hard. If I wanted to talk about a book, I’m not going to say they didn’t care, but they were not reading it. So, it was just me going on and on and on and they didn’t know what was happening. They couldn’t really engage,” Lankford said.
According to YouGov, a public opinion and data collection company, less than 55 percent of Americans read one book in 2023 and those who read were more likely to read physical copies than digital.
“One of my friends is avidly like “I’m not reading,” Lankford said. “I get it because I was not a reader at one point, but it just takes a certain book to make that light go off.”
Lankford said she read “Famous Last Words” by Katie Alender in seventh grade, and it made her fall back in love with reading.
“Famous Last Words” follows a killer in Los Angeles who reenacts famous Hollywood scenes with their murders. The main character, Willa, sees strange visions she must confront to solve the murders and save her life.
“I was the kid in elementary school that would have to go into a separate room to read,” Lankford said. “It made me kind of hate reading for a really long time.”
Barnard said if anyone is thinking about joining a book club but is on the fence, they should just do it and the pros of a book club outweigh the cons.
“You could meet some really cool people or read some really cool books,” Barnard said. “Honestly, the book we are reading now, if you just showed me the cover with the title I’d be like ew. Boring.”
Lankford said she forced herself to stop reading when she wanted to keep going because she enjoyed the book, despite the dust cover.
“With the book we are currently reading, we are supposed to get to chapter 28, and we stopped last week at chapter 14. Last night, I read until chapter 23, and I was like, “Nope, our next meeting is not until next Tuesday,” Lankford said.
Lankford said she was reading “The Seven Year Slip” by Ashley Poston for the club.
“I’ll sit down and read a whole book in like two days and with book club I can’t do it, so if I’m left on a cliffhanger I have to wait until we have our meeting to keep going. I think it is also a positive because it gives me more time to sit on the material.” Barnard said.
The cover of “The Seven Year Slip” is yellow, with the silhouettes of two figures, a couple of birds and some lemon branches bracketing the bold white and blue lettering on the cover.
The time-bending romance follows the journey of Clementine, a publicist, and the strange man she meets in the magical apartment left to her by her deceased aunt. The book follows themes of personal growth in grief and life transitions while following the love story of the two main characters navigating the obstacle of meeting seven years apart from each other’s timeline.
“Boone has a public library and the campus library but I like to buy my books. I think it goes back to not being limited to a certain period of time,” Richards said. “I love enemies-to-lovers or enemies-to-friends.”
Richards said she has books on her bookshelf with really cheesy covers she loves but when she goes to the bookstore will sometimes judge a book by its cover even though it won’t stop her from reading the synopsis.
“There are some books and I’m like “That is a stupid cover. Why does it look like that?” and it is one of the best books ever,” Lankford said.
Richards said she took a break from reading from the ages of 17 to 25 and after she graduated college, she wanted to give reading another shot.
“Growing up I would get in trouble in class for reading. I would eat lunch in the library so I could read,” Richards said.
Barnard said there is a stigma surrounding romance in reading communities.
“You’ll always have the people who read a lot of modern romance, and then you have classics-heads,” Barnard said. “If I’m reading this heavy material for class every day, I’m not going to be like, “Hmm, you know what I really want to open up? “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
Barnard said romance is one of her favorite genres because it allows her to escape from her real life and enjoy someone else’s adventure.
“Romance books are not realistic, especially romantic fantasy. It’s like, “Oh, the prince of this evil kingdom wants to kill me,” Barnard said. “It helps with seasonal depression. I’m in Vermont, so it’s getting dark now, and it’s barely four o’clock. It’s really sad, but then I can just open a book, and it’s happy.”
Barnard said much of the reading she is assigned for class are often coming from a “holier-than-thou” place and are not written for the average person to understand.
“When I get to read for book club it is like a vacation for my brain. The analytical part is of course still going because I’m a reader but it’s not as intense,” Barnard said.
Barnard said reading becomes more enjoyable when not being tested on it.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize there are a lot of life lessons in romance,” Lankford said. “One of my favorite books, “Daisy Jones and The Six”, I would not deem a romance but it has a lot of romance subplots. I learned a crap ton from that book. I think a lot of people think you open up a romance book and it’s like “la la la la la flowers and kisses and joy.”
“Daisy Jones and The Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid, published in 2019, is interview-style fiction about a band that rose to success in the 1970s and then broke up once they reached peak fame. The book dramatizes scandal and love while also addressing themes of grief, addiction and abandonment.
According to Time, Christina Lauren, a romance writing duo consisting of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, left their jobs in neuroscience research and school counseling to become full-time writers. Christina Lauren said the best romance follows characters as nuanced as real people, allowing for intelligent emotional connection, praising those pursuing desire and celebrating diversity in characters.
“I don’t think a lot of men really understand romance novels are more than just smut,” Richards said. “A lot have more meat to them.”
Smut refers to media containing heavily suggestive material or volumes of sexually explicit content.
Christina Lauren said they were shamed at points in their career because many people conflate sex and romance when the two are not the same.
“I was house-sitting recently for somebody’s cats, and I had to make myself get up and feed the cats. When I was done, I immediately went straight back into the book. Anywhere I went in the house, the book was with me. It was a Penelope Douglas book. It was “Credence,” Richards said. “I couldn’t put it down. It was kind of unhinged, but I think that’s why I liked it so much.”
The dark romance “Credence” by Penelope Douglas follows Tiernan, an only child who battled loneliness her whole life. After her parents die, she goes to live with her step-uncle and step-cousins where a reverse harem style relationship ensues between Tiernan and her step-cousins.
Richards said “Credence” is taboo in the bookish community, with reviews on Goodreads, a popular book review platform, being highly polarized.
“You are not supposed to like the villain or the bad people, usually for good reason, but in books they are more okay,” Richards said. “There’s something sexy and forbidden about the character.”
Richards said she reads books with mostly heroines leading the story and likes to conflate herself with the main character even if they are visually not similar.
“I like to imagine myself as the main character. I’m off doing all these adventures and off romancing all these people. The world is my oyster through books,” Richards said.
Lankford said because she is a psychology student, she reads books through a more psychological lens.
“I really dig deep into a character even if I’m not getting it from the author. Just using the situation they are in, I’m like, “Hm, I wonder if their brain is doing this,” or “I wonder if this friendship is going to work out because they are showing some toxic traits,” Lankford said.
Lankford said sometimes she wants to open a book and not think twice about it.
“I just want to read some actual, I’m not going to say garbage. I want to just read some poo poo pee pee in a book,” Lankford said.
Lankford said a lot of people in her book club like fantasy even though it is not her favorite genre. She said going out of her way to find a book the other members will love helps her read out of her comfort zone.
“I am 21 and just joined a book club. My nana is 74 and she just joined a book club in her neighborhood. She gets together with all her girlies and they read books,” Lankford said. “It’s for all ages.”
Lankford said book clubs allow for a safe space free of judgment while allowing you to share your opinions with your peers because everyone reads the same book.
“There is literally something for everybody out there. If you are struggling you can look up books to read if you like a certain tv show. There are so many different avenues for finding something you’ll enjoy,” Barnard said. “You don’t have to spend money to read. Go to your public library. They are there for a reason.”
Barnard said she listens to audiobooks while doing errands and household chores when she is not reading physical copies.
“A lot of it is finding a book that interests you. You don’t have to read romance or fantasy. If you are into sports books or history. There is history fiction and non-fiction,” Barnard said.
Lankford said the bookclub timeline keeps her accountable.
“Another one of my problems is if I get to a chapter and I don’t like it, bye. I’m not reading it anymore,” Lankford said.
Lankford said she is impressed with how many books she read since joining the book club because she used to only have time to read over the summer.
“My biggest thing is if you have time for a 20 minute Youtube video or you can scroll on Tiktok for two hours, you can find a book to enjoy,” Lankford said. “Give reading a freaking chance because I was someone who didn’t like it. Now, I completely changed my mind and it just took finding one book.”
