In September 2022 (it will soon be a year!), in “La Resurrección” parish, in Bogotá, we decided to start a new project, simple but exciting, without knowing at that time if it would have much of a future: a book club. The underlying idea was to foster a love of literature among young people from these neighborhoods from the South of Bogotá and offer, to those who wanted it, the opportunity to read great works of literature, discuss them in group, examine them in depth and, thus, be able to enjoy them. It seemed to us an original idea, since often in the pastoral plans of our parishes we do not take into account the promotion of culture, as if that were not also an urgent task (especially in contexts where other vital needs leave little time for intellectual formation and the arts).
Since then, the Book Club has grown, as has the enthusiasm of those who have joined it: currently it is a consolidated group of 14 people, mostly young men and women, who meet approximately once a month to share what we have discovered while reading a novel. During this time we have read and commented "The Pearl", by John Steinbeck, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", by García Márquez, "The Metamorphosis", by Kafka, "The Death of Iván Ilich", by Tolstoy, "The Old Man and the Sea", by Hemingway, "Novel of Chess", by Stefan Zweig... as you can see, already a small collection of great works that, without a doubt, have enriched the lives of those who participate in our Book Club. The list of suggested books for future reading is already quite long!
