A local book club and Meet-Up group survived the height of the pandemic, gained 85 following members and is now celebrating its third anniversary. The Men-Who-Read Book Club, founded by local actor Paul Cram, is a group of guys who get together each month to read non-fiction and meet in “third spaces”—public spaces that are welcoming to all, such as libraries, coffee shops or public parks.
Cram began the club on the site Meet-Up back in 2019 to gain some new friends through the hobby of reading nonfiction. After only having one member show up at the first meeting, three years later, the group now has 85 online members and multiple monthly in-person regulars. The group has read 37 books and held 37 events around Northeast Minneapolis.
Before the pandemic hit in 2020, the club had finally started piquing interest, which then dwindled during COVID and was hard to pick back up during that year—though core members continued attending. Cram has seen the book club begin to steadily gain members again in the last year, mainly from Northeast.
“Now it seems like we’re a completely new group,” said Cram. “Everybody who is here is new. And, it’s interesting because before the pandemic, the guys that were coming were from all over the Twin Cities area, but now it seems much more focused on Northeast.”
The number of new members has allowed Cram to implement new rules, adding democracy to the club. “We’re very democratic in that everyone can put in one book a month, and we’ll vote on which one we want to read,” said Cram. The club usually chooses a timely book or a seasonal one; in January for the new year the club read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In January of 2021, the club read “The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth about Healthy Eating” by Anthony Warner.
They read “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed for a Valentine’s theme in February. During another February, for Black History Month, they read “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” by C. Vann Woodward. For October, the book “Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife” by Mary Roach was chosen.
The book for June has not been chosen yet for Pride Month— “I loved and hated last year’s book,” said Cram. “Last year in June, we read a really heartbreaking book, a memoir, it’s called “The Men with the Pink Triangle” [by Heinz Heger]. It follows the story of Josef Kohout and his survival of Auschwitz as an openly gay man.
“I admittedly don’t always love every book we read, but I always learn something, and I always enjoy the monthly get-together,” book club member Brian Hornbecker said.
Cram’s “across the board” favorite book the club has read is “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”—covering the topic of medical ethics in 1951 and how race played into the science behind the medical field at the time. Doctors took a sample tissue of cells from Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman, without her consent to use for research. Today, the scientific community still uses the discoveries found in Lacks’ cells, now termed HeLa cells, for cancer research.
His second-place favorite s is “The Order of Time” by physicist Carlo Rovelli about the study of time as it relates to physics, a topic Cram didn’t know would pique his interest.
“What I love about book club is that there have been book selections I didn’t personally pick, and I never in a million years would ever pick,” said Cram. “And I’m so glad for that fact.”
Editor’s note: The monthly event meets at Columbia Heights Library, 3939 Central Ave. NE. Next up is their Saturday, May 14, 10:15 a.m. discussion on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling book, “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” by Mike Isaac. RSVP through the book club’s web page on www.MeetUp.com/Men-Who-Read. See full description of event #18665 here.
Below: Paul Cram (Provided photo)
