The Mathey College book club

For our January 2012 special issue on books, we visited one of the few Princeton student groups devoted to reading outside of class: the Mathey College book club. Read more at paw.princeton.edu

TRANSCRIPT:
[Narrator] For busy Princeton undergraduates, finding time to read for pleasure can be a challenge. But at Mathey College, students have a bit of extra incentive. The college's book club, organized by director of studies Kathleen Crown, offers free paperbacks and stimulating group discussions two or three times each year.

Nadirah Mansour: Dr. Crown sent out an email to all the members of Mathey College. She mentioned there was a free book involved, and I couldn't pass that up, so I ran over to the Mathey office as soon as I got the email and picked up both of the books that were on offer, not just the one.

Bryan Pannill: To begin with, everyone there really you can tell wants to be there. There's also no pressure. No one's grading you, no one's checking your participation, nothing like that, and so it's really this open, genuine discussion.

Mansour: It's very informal. It's an atmosphere we don't have in a lot of our classes. It's very casual, and it's often fun to put that bit a time aside for yourself to read something that's not mandatory.

Natasha Japanwala: You can pleasure read on your own, but the chance to read a book and then discuss it with your peers -- who have great opinions about what they read -- that's the most exciting part of the book club.




[Narrator] The club also invites notable guests. In November, English professor Nigel Smith led a conversation about the 2010 book "Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?"

Pannill: I'd say having those really distinguished people coming in to lead the discussion, it definitely is more of an incentive to actually read the book and really think about it.

[Narrator] Now in its eighth year, the Mathey group is the longest running book club on a campus where relatively few students read for pleasure.

Mansour: Princeton's such a great campus for people who are interested in writing and reading. We have a great English department. The Lewis Center's creative writing program is phenomenal, they're always bringing in amazing writers. And I just think it's very odd that we don't have more student initiative to try to read novels on our own time.

Category:

Education

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• Mathey College
• book club
• Princeton
• alumni
• PAW