Over the past three decades, Mary Gustafson has read at least 270 “assigned” books. That’s because Gustafson has been leading the book group at Eden Prairie’s St. Andrew Lutheran Church since the group began in the fall of 1994. This May, after 30 years as the group’s leader, she’s closing that chapter of her life.
The group originated from discussions at a church women’s retreat in fall 1994. “I was already in a neighborhood book group and several of the other women were like, ‘Gosh, we should have a book group at church,’ and it grew out of that,” Gustafson explained.
She and Julane Anderson, wife of St. Andrew’s former lead pastor Rod Anderson, met after the retreat to create book group guidelines and together wrote a prayer that has concluded every book group meeting since the beginning. Early on, Eden Prairie librarian Marjorie McPeak came and talked to the group “about book groups and some of the popular books that book groups were reading,” Gustafson said.
Initially, the church’s book group was two distinct groups, one meeting in the daytime and one in the evening hours, which functioned separately, including reading separate books, with the discussion leader shifting from month to month. At the time, although Gustafson was taking the organizational lead for the book group, she was mostly attending only the day group, where the first book choice was “Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel.
“And then, after a year or so, our numbers started to dwindle, and it became clear that people wanted more of a full-time leader,” Gustafson said. “So then I decided that I liked it a lot and would be happy to step up and be that long-time person that was always there and did both day and evening. And then we very quickly began reading the same book, because I couldn’t keep up with two books.”
Author visits
In addition to leading the monthly discussion questions, Gustafson also researches each book’s author for a short introductory presentation. Over the years, “Technology at the church has advanced,” with smart TVs in all the meeting rooms, Gustafson said. “So we were able to use clips from the internet of video interviews with authors and things like that, which has been fun.”
Some authors have also visited the group in person over the years, including Robert Alexander, author of “The Kitchen Boy”; Jan Dunlap, author of the Bob White Birder Murder Mysteries series; and Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, authors of “Adventure North,” which tells of their canoe journey from Chaska to Hudson Bay.
“When we did the author visit with the guys that had done the canoe trip, we opened that up to spouses because a lot of the women were saying that their spouses had read the book, and a lot of the men did come that night,” Gustafson said. Over the years, the group has been predominantly women, although it is technically open to all and a few men have come due to interest in a specific book. “Then they don’t tend to come again, because I think they’re overwhelmed by the women,” Gustafson said.
Participants share milestones, reconnect
Around 25 women attended the initial meeting in 1994, with between eight and 12 participating in both the day and evening groups for the first year. “Some of those people have been coming all these years, which is really fun,” Gustafson said.
She keeps a list and a nametag for nearly everyone who has ever participated in the day or evening book group, unless they have requested to be removed or have passed away. Current active participants number around 40, with a core group of about 25, but the email list includes 85 names. “It’s people who maybe live away or people that are here, and they just want to know what we’re reading,” Gustafson said.
Some previous members began attending virtually during the book group’s Zoom sessions offered during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We had pretty great participation during that time because everybody was eager to read, eager to see other people,” Gustafson said.
One original member from 1994, Chris Adolphi, who now lives in New Mexico, participated via the COVID-era Zoom sessions. “Since then, almost every month, she sends me a comment before book club, about her impressions about the book, which I then share with the day group, because that was the group that she participated in,” Gustafson said.
“I think I’ve been in a very privileged position as the leader because I’m in contact with everybody,” Gustafson said. “There have been a lot of lifetimes that we’ve gone through as a group,” ranging from watching young women get married, have children, and those children graduate from high school, to members struggling with health conditions or having spouses die. “That’s a lot of territory we’ve covered together and life events,” she added.
Group members have included mothers and daughters, sisters, and other relatives, with a couple of women participating regularly with high school-age daughters. Spouses and friends have also attended to share expertise or experience around a particular book’s topic. Carol Jorgenson’s husband, Wayne Jorgenson, spoke about the Civil War when the group read “My Name is Mary Sutter” by Robin Oliviera; Sandy Henks’s husband, Ken Henks, talked about his perspective as a Vietnam War veteran for “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien; and Trudy Gunderson’s colleague Elena Hoen, a native of Cuba, shared her experience when the group read “The Red Umbrella” by Christina Diaz Gonzalez.
The group has also taken docent-led book tours at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts focused on books such as “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr and “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. When reading “Swede Hollow” by Ola Larsmo, some group members visited the Swede Hollow area in St. Paul.
Book selection includes wide variety
“From the very beginning, our group wanted to read a wide variety of genres,” Gustafson said. “We decided, even though we were at a church, that we would not be just a Christian book group.”
Throughout the group’s September through May meetings, members have the opportunity to suggest books they think would be good for the group to discuss in the following year. Gustafson keeps track of the suggestions and, in April, sends out a document of those suggestions that includes title and author, a short synopsis, publication date, page count, and the number of copies available through the library. The list is also separated by fiction and nonfiction.
The May meeting includes a discussion of those books. “It really makes a difference if people speak for the book that they think is going to be really good for us, because it highlights it for people and they think, ‘Oh, that does sound good,’” Gustafson said.
In recent years, the actual selections have occurred through group members’ participation in an online voting system. “It takes a lot of pressure off me personally because the group has selected the books. I think it’s a much better way to do it,” Gustafson said.
Previously, “I would have a fun day where I would go to Barnes & Noble and read a chapter of each of the books and just make sure that they seemed appropriate for our group,” Gustafson said.
Length of the book is important, she noted – “Everybody’s busy” – and she used the group discussion to categorize books into a form that represented a variety of genres, such as biography, world literature, Minnesota authors, historical fiction, and more. When the citywide shared reading program Eden Prairie Reads was active, one spot on the list was also reserved for that year’s annual selection.
The group has also tried to choose books easily available from the library, “So we usually were not reading current bestsellers,” Gustafson said. “They’re still wonderful books when we get to it, but we’re not necessarily cutting-edge.”
Gustafson’s favorites of the books
In general, the group has preferred reading fiction over nonfiction, with the evening group having more of an interest in nonfiction than the day group. “They bring different perspectives to the books, which makes it interesting for me,” Gustafson said.
The day group, for instance, thought the Teddy Roosevelt biography “Mornings on Horseback” by David McCullough “was kind of a slog,” with the evening group liking it a bit more. Conversely, the day group liked Mitch Albom’s “The Stranger in the Lifeboat” better than the evening group.
In the day group, “I think of one woman in particular who is constantly reading with an eye to how it relates spiritually, and she often brings up very interesting points that maybe some of the rest of us haven’t thought of,” Gustafson said. “Often, there are just things about the characters, parts of their personality or something in the way they interact, that relates to Christian values.”
For instance, the group found a lot of theological elements to discuss in “Peace Like a River” by Leif Enger as well as “Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger.
Gustafson’s personal favorites over the years have included fiction works “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese, “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver, “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant and “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner. “I’m not a sci-fi reader, but I really loved ‘The Sparrow’ by Mary Doria Russell,” Gustafson said.
For nonfiction, she has enjoyed “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah, “The Girl with Seven Names” by Hyeonseo Lee, “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. “I loved reading ‘Radium Girls’ by Kate Moore this year; that was a whole piece of history that I didn’t know anything about,” Gustafson said. Additionally, “I found ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker to be very impactful for my life.”
Gustafson, personally, did not like “A Year by the Sea” by Joan Anderson, although it seemed popular in the group. And, while she herself loves poetry, “We tried to do a little poetry, but it didn’t go over too well,” she commented.
What’s next for Gustafson, group
Gustafson’s mother, Barbara Burger, also loved poetry and reading. Until Burger’s death earlier this year, Gustafson shared the book group books with her.
“I always tend to buy the books rather than get them at the library like most of our members do because I’m preparing for presenting and so forth,” Gustafson said. When she finished with books, “I would always pass them to my mom, and she would read them when she was living in Iowa City (Iowa).”
Burger and her husband eventually moved to Michigan and, during the pandemic, she began losing her eyesight due to macular degeneration. “It was my husband, Kevin, who said, ‘Well, she loves reading, and you love reading. You should just call her every day and read to her those books that you’ve been sending.
“It was a really precious time for my mom and I, and we read many books together” in roughly half-hour sessions over the years, Gustafson said. “We’ve traveled quite a bit, but even when we were traveling, we’d always carve out time to be able to spend that time with her.”
After retiring as the book group leader, Gustafson expects to do even more traveling, as well as spend time with her six grandchildren. “I’m just feeling myself pulled in different directions so that I’m ready to not be responsible for being here and preparing,” she said.
She also plans on continuing to occasionally attend the St. Andrew book group, as well as participate in the Cardinal Creek neighborhood book group she’s been part of since 1986. “And I’m looking forward to just looking at that stack of things that I’ve been putting off that I just want to read, for me,” she said, starting with Abraham Verghese’s “The Covenant of Water.”
The book group itself will continue as well, with the day and evening groups reading the same books for the 2024-2025 sessions, and having one overall coordinator, Cori Eichelberger, but operating more autonomously for meetings and discussions.
Considered a small group by the church, the meeting dates and book lists are published on the church website, “So I suspect that there are people out there that are reading our books that choose not to come to the club, but there is that additional outreach,” Gustafson said.
Although book group participants include St. Andrew members’ friends who don’t necessarily attend the church, Gustafson said, “It really does give people a connecting point. I like seeing a lot of people that I know when I come to church here.”
A fan of small groups herself, Gustafson said leading the book group has been a satisfying volunteer experience through the years. Prior to becoming a homemaker and volunteer, she was a special education teacher. “So this was that little bit of teacher thing that was still in me,” she said.
“I’ve gotten so much more than I’ve given through all these relationships and all these books I’ve read. It’s been really fun.”
Gustafson’s last St. Andrew book group meetings are on May 6. She has provided a downloadable list of all the books the group has read since 1994.
Editor’s Note: Writer Joanna Werch Takes has been a member of the St. Andrew book group for approximately 20 years.
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