On a Friday night at Books on the Bosque, folks are discussing the latest selection of the horror book club.
The shop opened in 2022, as the dream of a mother-daughter duo to open a local space tailored to readers. Desiree Condit recounts a conversation with her mother, Deborah Condit.
“What would you think if I opened up a bookstore? And I was like, ‘oh wow. In the late 2000s, that's crazy!’ And she was like ‘would you help me?’ and I was like ‘absolutely I would.’ And it just like completely shot off,” Desiree said.
The idea blossomed post-COVID, an era of uncertainty and social isolation for many.
“I think with COVID and everything, everyone was very separated and I think a lot of us kind of lost that human touch,” Condit said, “So we wanted to kind of create something where we could all get together and we started the bookclubs! If people wanted romance, we gave them a romance bookclub. If people wanted horror, we gave them a horror book club. We just listened to our audience and grew a family,”
English teacher Sarah Johnson moved to the state two years ago and is part of the horror book club.
"I just started coming to the book clubs here in February. I’m not from New Mexico so I was looking for community and finding people to talk to as an adult,” Johnson said.
This is a common sentiment amongst adults these days. After decades of close proximity in school, it’s harder to make connections with people of similar age outside of that setting.
For many, the pandemic increased isolation, and made folks more dependent on their phones. Book clubs are designed to give people a place to gather and express themselves, outside of a screen.
“I love the discussions that we have. I love that we have a friendship both in and outside of the book club and I think that that’s what I was looking for and that's been fostered in the community that's here,” Johnson said.
Books on the Bosque has 10 different book clubs, ranging from horror, to an emerging genre called romantasy, which is of course a mix of romance and fantasy.
“Reading can be very sexy and very erotic. I think there is something to reading that women appreciate so much – fictional men. I mean, come on,” Desiree Condit said.
Bookworks opened in 1984 and Shannon Guin-Collins became part owner of the store in 2023.
“There have been various iterations of Bookworks book clubs over the years,” she said, "And I’ve always sort of had it in the back of my mind that it would be really awesome to do a queer book club, but we didn’t have quite the right host for it. So when Ezekiel joined the team and then came to us with the idea of starting one, it was just perfect,”
Ezekiel Acosta has been a book seller at the shop since last year. After reading the American Booksellers Association handbook, “The ABA Right to Read,” Acosta felt inspired to create a reading space for his community.
“One of the ways to combat book banning in your state is like creating a book club. So I brought up the idea, and I think the relevancy of the Queer Book Club has continued to grow with the targeting of queer and the trans community specifically,” Acosta said.
He said the club is not only a space to gather like minds, but one that aims to provide the opportunity to learn and grow.
“I think books are ways for us to be in conversation with trans and queer people across geographies and time who are experiencing bans, policies, media portrayals that continue to target us, dehumanize us, and criminalize us. So we’re able to talk in a queer-led space about these issues in our communities through fictional characters,” Acosta said.
Bookworks has several including a new one focused on horror.
It’s not only bookstores hosting these clubs. Local libraries host a variety of book clubs across the city.
The International District Library holds a Young Adult book club called “Read Between the Spines” that features works with inclusive representations of characters, themes, and settings. Brooke Holland runs the group.
“I think it's important to build safe places in libraries, especially in the International District. Ya know, teen audiences are traditionally hard to pull into library spaces and I just felt like that [creating a book club] was a good way to dip my toe into pulling that specific audience into the library,” Holland said.
All of these book clubs are always accepting new members, and meet once a month.
The owner of Bookworks encouraged folks to not be intimidated by the idea of book clubs.
“I think sometimes there can be a little bit of a misconception of if you didn’t like it, or maybe you didn’t finish it, that you shouldn’t come, but we would say come anyway! We’ll still have something to talk about,” Guin-Collins said.
She adds that disagreements often make book clubs more interesting.
Looking to join a club? Here’s a few places to start your search:
