Book, film forum takes off

CELINA - A group of Wright State University-Lake Campus English majors has launched a forum to discuss novels and their respective film adaptations in an effort to share a love of storytelling with the community.

Stream and Read made its debut in March at the Mercer County District Library, where participants compared and contrasted elements of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" with clips from the movie and the recent Netflix series that were inspired by the classic tale of terror.

The first session was a success with roughly a half dozen people from outside the classroom joining in the conversation.

"We had a couple that were really invested in discussing the book," student Lindsey Dieringer said. "They came because, you could tell, they had this passion and appreciation for what they read."

Lake Campus English Professor Christine Junker in her upperclass literature practicum course guides her students in using and refining their literary study skills in practical ways in the community.

Late last year she approached county library staff, asking them if her students could assist in any way, as the library is the natural community venue that focuses on reading. Staff informed her the library could use another book club, this one focused toward young adults ages 20 to 35.
"And those people aren't coming to book clubs
right now and they're not using the library in general as much as the library would like," Junker said.

She then handed the project off to her class. Looking to appeal equally to fiction readers and video buffs, the students created Stream and Read.

"And they ran with it," she said. "And what they came up with was an awesome idea of doing things that you stream and read. So there's a novel that goes along with a popular television series (or movie)."

The students brainstormed a list of potential works and spearheaded a marketing campaign with the use of social media and blogs. They also slapped flyers on the windows of local businesses and talked to people face-to-face, plying them with cupcakes.

"So we've done a lot of promotion that was online but I think it's actually, contrary to what we might believe now, more effective actually to talk to people - and give them things like cupcakes," Junker said.

The students said the initial meeting of Stream and Read went off well.

"We did more of a looser discussion. We had clips from the Netflix original series but also a clip from the 1963 film "The Haunting," that was based on the novel," student Tyler Deitsch of New Knoxville said.

Andrew Ewry, a junior English major from Wapakoneta, held even greater expectations for the second session, in which "You," a novel by Caroline Kepnes and a show on Lifetime, was to be dissected.

"For the first run it was definitely as good as we could have hoped for, but this time we think that we've got it down and this is promising to be much better," he said.

Junker expressed pride in how her students developed the concept and put it into practice, leading discussion in a focused, but not too narrow manner.

"I was very happy with the way it went. We had participants that were really engaged. All of you were really engaged," she told the class. "It was a neat event."

Book clubs in general, Junker pointed out, give people a chance to engage more deeply with the text at hand and to think about it differently.

"You see different things when you talk about it with other people and you sort of get these ideas that you didn't have before, so I think partly the job of book clubs is just you get to talk about books with people," Junker said.

Dieringer said too often people shrug off the notion of talking about novels.

"I grew up reading books - loved that more than anything," she said. "I love being able to create a bookclub like this because it kind of lets us remind people of the sort of lost appreciation for books."

Her professor agreed with that assessment.

"Talking about cultural objects in public with one another, it is a lost appreciation, I think," Junker said.

The students aren't sure how long they'll be able to keep the club running once their course is finished; it will depend on their schedules, time and interest shown by the public.

But the club might be a step in a right direction toward capturing the interest of young adults in the area looking for a sense of culture and community, said Deitsch, who describes himself as a nontraditional student who came back from Dayton to finish his degree here.

"Opportunities like this I wish had been here when I first moved up here, and I hope businesses or communities in the area see that people will come to things like this," he said.

Library director Elizabeth Muether said the library is indeed trying to expand its reach and scope.

"We're trying to reach a young adult population," she said.