Zama Blanchard Dexter: Iconic North Louisiana book lover
Zama Blanchard Dexter likes people who read.
A serious book lover since childhood, she helped grow the First Presbyterian Church Book Club in Shreveport from a few readers who gathered around a table to 70 people in the sanctuary, a club that has shaped many a book discussion in Northwest Louisiana.
“It started with some of us liking the same book,” she said with a smile via a Facetime interview. Part of her talent, according to those who know her, is identifying good reviewers, “big readers” who are organized and entertaining, injecting “some frisky in there.”
Now age 85, Dexter stepped back as the leader after nearly a decade, and the book group is taking a break, with a waiting list to be notified when it resumes, possibly in Fall. But despite that shift, she remains a lively reader who reads a book weekly and recommends authors with gusto, a fan of hardbacks with a collection of several hundred books. She is a model of how reading is a fulfilling, educational activity that connects people.
As a tiny child in Dixie in north Caddo Parish, she was “upset” that she couldn’t read. Once she learned how, “I read everything. I always had a book.” Her mother was her inspiration. “She read to us every day. She was always reading.” And that prompts ardent advice: “All people with children, read to your child.”
Now Dexter, who grew up in Shreveport and is a 1956 graduate of Byrd High, finds reading to be “a quality of life issue,” a passion she still enjoys. “Reading expands your mind,” she said. “I like to find a subject that I don’t know about and read all about it. It opens up the world.”
A veteran artist in pastels and oils, she taught art and history at Southfield School and is a member emeritus of the 20th Century Club, a North Louisiana group that meets every two weeks with two members each meeting writing papers about a book for discussion. Through 20 years, Dexter enjoyed writing about many books and regrets she is no longer required to do so for participation.
She prefers serious books—no fluff, no self-help and nothing too overtly religious. When she finds authors she likes, she devours everything they’ve written. A fan of both fiction and nonfiction, she believes “fiction is diminished lately. It’s not as good as it used to be.” Her explanation? Great fiction needs to be “far-out but plausible,” and as real life has gotten more extreme, fiction has suffered.
How does she choose a book? “Usually it’s recommended to me by someone,” she said.
When she and her sister, Mary Anne Selber, fretted about what to give each other for gifts as they aged, they had an “aha” moment. “Why are we even worried about it? We can give books.” (For Christmas, Selber gave her the nonfiction bestseller, “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann. For Selber’s recent birthday, Dexter gave her “First Lie Wins” by Shreveporter Ashley Elston.)
3 great novel recommendations from Dexter:
--“Beartown” by Swedish writer Fredrik Backman (her current favorite book). “He just has a different perspective on things,” she said.
--“Jayber Crow” by Wendell Berry, introduced by a pastor who did a talk for the book group. Once she discovered Berry, “I read all of him.”
--“Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger. “I just kind of breathed it in,” she said. “It just struck me.”
If you run into Dexter, be ready to talk books. “I don’t really have anything in common with people who don’t read,” she said.
Columnist Judy Christie and NYT bestselling author Lisa Wingate co-authored “Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society,” the nonfiction sequel to Wingate’s bestselling novel “Before We Were Yours.” For more about Christie, see www.judychristie.com or follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JudyChristieAuthor.
This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Zama Blanchard Dexter: Iconic North Louisiana book lover
