The book-fest club

October is National Reading Group Month, so forget September, otherwise known as National Cholesterol Education Month, and pay attention to that other thing your grandmother cares a lot about.

The coordinators of The Boston Book Festival opened the city of Boston to the world of book clubs with the One City One Story project, which strives to bring together all of Boston’s residents over short stories by local authors.

Alicia Anstead, editor-in-chief of Inside Arts magazine, lead the discussion of One City One Story’s first short story choice, “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face” by Tom Perrotta, at the Honan-Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library on Oct. 4.

“I’m hoping Perrotta’s story will bring us all together &- One City One Story &- around a work of art that may lend us insights into our own communities, home lives and inner selves,” Anstead wrote.

Thirty thousand free copies of “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face” were distributed for free around Boston, and the story was made available online. The culmination of the first round of One City One Story was a discussion in Copley Square on Oct. 16 during the Boston Book Festival that the author, Perrotta, attended.

“That’s what One City One Story is all about: a conversation around literature!” the One City One Story website states.

CULTURED CLUB

Boston University’s Howard Thurman Center Book Club was founded on the same ideals as One City One Story. The group reads multicultural books to encourage discussion about diverse beliefs and lifestyles.

“The advantage of this book club is that it draws people together from various backgrounds,” said Katie Clements, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the HTC Book Club.

Having members from different cultural backgrounds allows “personal insight into a particular theme,” she said.

The book club meets once a week and covers three books a semester. Those books are provided to the members, for free, by the HTC.

“Recently, we’ve chosen smaller-scale books so we can bring in authors from the East Coast,” Clements said.

The club just finished reading “The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging” by Kym Ragusa, which addresses a particular culture, as all of the books the group chooses do.

Previously, the club has read “Angela’s Ashes” and “Brother, I’m Dying,” and supplemented those readings by watching the film adaptations of the books.

The members have different reasons for joining.

“When I was little, I really enjoyed reading books,” said Darya Akimova, a junior in CAS and a member of the book club. “In college, that sort of died. Signing up for book club was a way to make myself read.”

“When I was in high school, it wasn’t lecture-style, it was discussion-style. I guessed I was used to that,” Michelle Van Rooyen, a sophomore in the School of Education, said. “So when I went to college, I guess this took that place.”

Tara Bylsma, a junior in CAS, has a straightforward reason for attending.

“I go because I’m an addict,” she said.

BOOK MARK IT

Lisa Gozashti, the assistant manager and book buyer at Brookline Booksmith, a book store on Harvard Avenue. in Brookline, started a book club open to the public that meets the second Monday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the store. The club has been running for 12 years and draws “people from 19 to 90, men and women,” Gozashti said.

Gozashti also belongs to a book club she started with a group of friends, all middle-aged women, mostly working mothers.

She said each club was created for a different reason, and that each serves a unique purpose.

“In my personal book club, which is just a bunch of basically middle-aged women with kids, I feel like it’s kind of radical, for my age group,” Gozashti said.

“All the women that are in it are so devoted to it,” she said, adding that, for many of the women, it is a highlight of their month.

The book club that is open to the public serves to offer a forum for intelligent discussion and a way for the public to explore new opinions, she said.

Gozashti’s personal book club is working their way through the Nobel Prize winners in Literature, she said. It’s encouraged her to pick up books she would have shied away from if she were reading on her own.

“I’m reading “Pygmallion.” I wouldn’t have done that on my own,” she said, adding, “When you’re reading to discuss, you don’t stop reading; you push on.”

By working through the Nobels, Gozashti said, she has been exposed to culture and history she would not have otherwise known of. Reading great, complex works of literature, some of which were written long ago, and many of which were originally written in a different language, requires her to research why the author wrote about the subject he or she did and why addressing that subject was significant.

“Those books are almost beyond us, so we’re doing background research to figure out what was going on in the time period,” she said.

Paying attention to the culture during the period the literature was written is important, and paying attention to different cultures remains important, Gozashti said.

Books can offer readers and intimate glimpse into different lifestyles and thereby promote acceptance. They are an equivocator, Gozashti said.

“That’s why people who read, and read with discipline, across culture, are more tolerant,” she said.

“In any culture, people getting together around a book&- books have the power to transform,” Gozashti said.

READ-Y OR NOT

For the members of each of these book clubs, the groups are important because they motivate members to set aside time to sit down, read and think about new ideas and cultures. All have found their book clubs enriching and worthwhile.

“You make that commitment, to sit down and do something, when there are so many other draws on our time,” Gozashti said.

“Especially in our age of technology, where the old forms of knowledge are being trashed, being forgotten,” Gozashti said, “the books are in a tradition that is thousands of years old.”