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03/28/2018 08:30 AMHere’s a riddle: What can be more comforting than a best friend, more informative than a public broadcasting documentary, and more satisfying than a gourmet dinner? The answer: a good book.
That’s why Vicki Harris has taken the lead in forming a new book discussion club at the Deep River Library. The first meeting will be on Monday, April 23 at 6:30 p.m. Vicki says six people have already signed up. Each month one of the members will chose the book to be read and lead the discussion.
“That way we will get a wide variety,” Vicki says. “It stretches your mind to read things that are a bit outside your comfort zone.
Vicki will lead a discussion at the first meeting of A Man Called Ove, Frederik Backman’s bestselling novel that debuted as a movie starring Tom Hanks in 2016.
Vicki and her husband Chad, a Deep River native now retired after 20 years of military service, moved to town two years ago from Cromwell, but the hours of Vicki’s job made it hard for her to meet people. She works in Bristol, leaving home at 7 in the morning and returning at 6 at night. She says her own shyness compounded the problem.
“I’m not overly extroverted, so I don’t know a lot of people here other than family,” she says. “I thought a book club might be a good way to meet new people.”
She emailed Deep River Public Library (DRPL) Director Susan Rooney about the possibility of forming an evening book group. The library does have a monthly book and movie discussion group, but during the day. All the organizing for the evening group, in fact, has taken place through emails. Rooney and Vicki have yet to meet face to face.
“We’ve wanted to offer an evening book club for some time now. There is certainly a need for one as working people can’t make our monthly afternoon book club,” Rooney notes. “As the only full timer at DRPL, I am not able to take the additional time needed from my schedule to take on a second book club. I was delighted when Vicki contacted me saying she was new to the area and was having trouble finding an evening book club to join. She said she would be happy to facilitate or do whatever it took to make this happen.”
Rooney added that the Deep River Library belongs to Bibliomation, the largest book consortium in Connecticut, and she anticipated no problem in getting sufficient copies of volumes for participants.
Vicki, who grew up in Portland and graduated from Southern Connecticut State University, works at Bristol’s best-known employer, ESPN, as an executive assistant to directors for national and international security. The job involves making sure ESPN personnel are safe and protected both in this country and abroad in such situations as the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Though she is at a premier sports broadcasting organization, Vicki herself is not an avid sports follower.
“It’s lost on me. I’m not a fan,” she says.
Often, she doesn’t recognize well-known on-air commentators at ESPN headquarters. Still, her husband, who sometimes comes over for lunch in the ESPN cafeteria, is, up-to-date on ESPN personalities.
“We could be standing next to a celebrity and my husband will say, ‘Oh my gosh, that is so-and-so,’” she says.
Vicki was working as the manager of a retail outlet that was first at the mall in Westbrook and later in Clinton when she met Chad. It was quite a weekend. She met him on a Friday night. On Monday, she learned the company she worked for was closing and she would no longer have a job.
Chad was home on a 33-day leave before being stationed in Hawaii. After meeting, they saw each other every day and Vicki says by the time a week was out she knew he was the one. They met in May 1998; she moved to Hawaii, where the couple was married in September of that year.
Chad has served tours of duty not only in the United States but also in Iraq and in Haiti. The couple now has a son, who is a sophomore at Valley Regional High School, and a daughter, an 8th grader at John Winthrop Middle School.
Vicki is no stranger to book discussion clubs. She still attends one in Cromwell, made up largely of women she met on the sidelines of her children’s soccer games and activities like Brownies. Her own taste runs to novels, now mostly modern ones, but there was a time she looked back to some literary classics. She used to read fantasy novels, but no longer.
“I did it at a time when they were less violent,” she says.
Often, given her hour commute each way, she doesn’t actually read books; she listens to them in her car.
“Some people say that’s cheating but I disagree,” she says. “You’re using a different set of skills and auditory processing becomes more important as people age.”
Despite the long commute to Bristol, Vicki loves living in Deep River.
“It’s a feeling I get when I get off at Exit 5 [off Route 9]. I know I am home,” she says. “I feel like I’ve lived here forever. There’s just something about it.”
To find out more about the new book discussion club, call the Deep River Library at 860-526-6039. Its first meeting is on Monday, April 23 at 6:30 p.m., discussing A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman.