Two Chairs, One Pact: A Decade of Reading With Exactly One Other Person

The sign-up sheet at our public library in Ohio had room for twenty names. We got twelve. For a while, that felt like a crowd — twelve strangers squished into Margaret's sunroom, passing a tin of store-bought cookies, disagreeing politely about a novel none of us had finished.

That was 2014. This year, it's me and Margaret. Two chairs. One pact.

And I have to tell you: I've never loved a book club more.

How a Club Shrinks Without Anyone Deciding It Should

Nobody announced a departure. People just stopped coming. A job change in one direction, a grandchild in another, a slow drift toward the podcast version of literary conversation, where you can consume someone else's opinion without ever offering your own. By the time we noticed the room had emptied, the room had already emptied.

Margaret and I looked at each other over the remains of a Zoom meeting — just two faces in a grid built for twelve — and made a decision neither of us framed as dramatic. We'd keep going. Just us.

We shook on it, which felt silly, and then it didn't.

The Books Are Chosen Like Gifts Now

With twelve people, you pick books by committee, which means you pick books nobody hates, which means you pick books nobody loves. With two, something different happens. When it's your turn, you're not choosing a title. You're choosing a present.

Last spring, Margaret handed me a battered paperback of "Stoner" by John Williams — the kind of mid-century American novel that would never survive a committee vote — and watched my face while I read the first page. When I picked Marilynne Robinson for her, I did it with my heart in my throat, hoping she'd hear what I heard.

She did. That's the whole thing, really. That's the pact.

We Have Competed in Silence for Ten Years

There are rules we never wrote down. Whoever suggests the book reads the introduction but not the afterword. Nobody spoils past the halfway mark by phone. And each of us keeps a private tally of the other's margin notes.

Yes — the margins. We lend each other our copies after we finish, and reading Margaret's annotations has become a second book layered over the first. Her exclamation points are rare and therefore precious. When she writes "oh, this fool" next to a character, I know I'm in for it. I've started writing notes to her in books I lend, which means my marginalia has gotten embarrassingly performative, and she knows it, and we pretend not to notice.

There is a quiet competition, too. Who finishes first. Who spots the turn before the other. Who claims the best line. It is the gentlest rivalry in my life, and I protect it fiercely.

What You Lose, What You Don't

I won't pretend it's the same. A big club gives you disagreement — twelve readings of the same chapter, some of them unrecognizable to each other. That's a kind of education. With two, we risk becoming an echo chamber of two, finishing each other's interpretations.

Except we don't, somehow. Margaret reads for character the way some people read for plot, and I read for sentences, and after ten years we still regularly surprise each other. Maybe more than we did in the crowd, when it was easier to hide behind the loudest voice in the sunroom.

A full room gives you breadth. One loyal companion gives you depth. I've had both now, and I can tell you which one changed how I read.

An Open Letter, Sort Of

I think of this column as a letter, and letters need addressees, so: Margaret, if you're reading this — you are, you always read everything — thank you for not letting the club die with dignity. Thank you for choosing books like gifts. Thank you for losing our silent competition exactly as often as you win it.

And to everyone else: you don't need twelve people. You don't need a sunroom or a sign-up sheet or a tin of cookies. You need one person who will hand you a book and wait, openly, greedily, for your face to change.

Find that person. Shake on it. It will feel silly.

Then it won't.