Book Club

I started a book club about fourteen and a half years ago.  I gathered together fellow moms who loved to read and wanted a night out once a month to discuss something other than potty training, breast feeding, volunteering at the school, quick dinners.......anything "mom" related.  We decided to meet at the local Barnes and Noble in the early evening, once a month without our children. 

After fourteen years, my book club is still meeting once a month at the local Barnes & Noble and there are three of us who are original members.  I still carry around my book "wish list" journal.

It's stuffed with free book club companion pamphlets from Random House.

Sticky notes and other hand written book lists.

Magazine and newspaper articles declaring "must reads" or "best sellers".

I bring it all every month to my book club meeting at Barnes & Noble.  We chose Barnes & Noble as a meeting place because it makes selecting books each month so easy.  When someone suggests a book, we can go right to the shelves and find it and decide if it's something that we all want to read.  We usually try to find discussion questions on-line prior to our meeting.  A lot of times we only need to go through a couple of questions to get us started.  There's no shortage of conversation/discussion in our group.  We can disagree with each other; laugh with each other; cry with each other and learn from one another.  (We even got "shushed" by another customer for laughing to loud!)  I always come away feeling a little smarter after I've been with these women. 

Here's a small list of some of our past selections: 

The Marriage Plot:  A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck
Away by Amy Bloom
The Turtle Catcher by Nicole Helget
Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger
The Sparrow by Mary Dona Russell
Family Baggage by Monica McInerery
The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini
Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Some I liked.  Some I hated.  Some I struggled to get through and then had an "ah-ha" moment when we discussed it.  Some I loved and have read more than once.  I'm working on compiling a list of all the books we've read for the past fourteen years.  I have visions of getting them printed on t-shirts or book bags as a special gift for each member.  That will be about 170+ titles!  I'm wondering if we can keep going for another fourteen years and 170+ more titles!  I hope so!

"The more that you read, the more things you'll know.  The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."  -Dr. Seuss