Auntie’s book fix

New book, used book. Red book, blue book. Auntie's Bookstore, on the corner of West Main Avenue in downtown Spokane, has a book for everyone. The owner, Chris O'Harra, also leads an open reading group once a month.

O'Harra's reading group has met for more than 15 years. Every December, the members get together for a potluck and vote on the books they will read the coming year. Though new people come every month and some regulars occasionally miss meetings, roughly 12 core members keep the group going strong.

"It's a great group of people. They all run it, and I throw out the questions," O'Harra said.
"Chris is just comfortable enough with silence. Then she draws people out, gets them talking. It's an art really, and that's why this is the group I come to," said Susan, one of the loyal core members.

O'Harra gets new members to participate with friendly encouragement.

"You just got to jump right in. Don't let us intimidate you," she told Amanda, a young lawyer who just moved to Spokane and came to Auntie's looking for social things to do around the city.

Other group members come to see friends, talk with intelligent people, and read books that they might otherwise ignore or never notice. Sue, a potter, said the group has read many books that usually would never cross her radar. Francesca agreed and pointed to this month's book, "Motherless Brooklyn," by Jonathan Lethem, as an example.

"I would never have picked this book up on my own," Francesca said.

The book takes place in New York and follows the adventures of Lionel Essrog, a detective with Tourette's syndrome. Tourette's symptoms include motor and verbal tics such as tapping and shouting out obscenities at inappropriate moments. As the plot unfolds, Essrog attempts to solve a gruesome murder and uses his disorder to his advantage.
"If you didn't like it, be gentle. Because I thought this was a really interesting book!" O'Harra told the group at the beginning of the discussion.

The group agreed that they liked the book and enjoyed learning more about New York.
Talking about the setting and Tourette's syndrome revealed the group's diversity. One woman grew up in New York and described the book as "really accurate; it made me want jump on a plane to New York."

Another woman said that she learned about the city through her father, who lived there most of his life. These two women also work in the health care profession and shared some of their experiences with people who struggle with neurological disorders.

Many of the members bring humor to the group. Talking about the ways Essrog dealt with his disorder, Pam, a Spokane resident who works at a marketing company, said, "When he was with a woman, he was calmer."

Pam's friend Tina joked back.

"That was sex that did that," she said.

The group erupted in laughter. Cynde, an English professor at the local community college, also prompted guffaws with some her personal anecdotes. One of the stories centered on her son's close friend who has Tourette's and an entertaining attempt at playing hide-and-seek at a party.

 "There's humor in here," Tina said at one point in the discussion. The same can be said for the reading group and the antics of its regulars.

O'Harra's reading group meets at 7 p.m. on one Tuesday of every month. Auntie's has schedules available at the front desk. For next month, the group will read "Elegance of the Hedgehog," by the French novelist Muriel Barberry. The book tells the tale of the autodidact Renée Michel, who conceals her intelligence and love for Leo Tolstoy's works in order to keep her blue-collar job.

One of the group members said she takes "books like heroine. When I come into Auntie's, I can smell the books, and I have to have them." O'Harra's reading group offers a fix to any and all literature junkies who want to discuss books and make a few new friends.