Why rich women pay me to tell them what to read

By Amy Silverberg

When I tell people I have a job facilitating book clubs, the first response is almost always, “That’s a job?”

Boy, is it. I work for a company that employs people like me: writers with doctorates, a need for cash and very few marketable skills. Most of my book clubs are made up of women somewhere between the ages of 45 and 99. They’ve met in a variety of ways — in college, in the pickup line at their now-grown children’s schools, through their ex-husbands. What they all have in common: They love to read, and they want to do it as efficiently as possible.

I’m hired to make the book club run smoothly — to make everyone feel heard and seen, much like I imagine mothers do with their small children. (I’m not a mother; the closest I’ve come is a long-held souvenir spoon collection.) I’m there to smooth out all of the snags that sometimes occur when nobody’s in charge. There are personality differences, disagreement with book choices, intrinsic ways of seeing the world that can occasionally come to a head in a book club. Read the full piece at the Los Angeles Times.