One night at a holiday party, a group of moms who met when their children were in elementary school, were talking, one thing led to another, and they realized they had just formed a book club!
I enjoy reading but was hesitant to join a book club because I want to read what I want — not what someone else wants to read. But I threw caution to the wind and took a chance! 12 years and 120+ books later, our elementary school kids are turning 30, and we are still reading.
When forming the club, we set some ground rules. We read one book a month, based on whomever had a recommendation.
Absolutely no purchasing of books — all selections must be available at the public library. We wanted to avoid unnecessary costs to keep the club going, and when you have a resource like Mt. Lebanon Library in your neighborhood, it couldn’t be easier! Go to the library website [1] to request a title. If they don’t have it, they’ll ship it from another library and contact you when it’s ready. If a book is too recent for the library to have in stock, we put it on a list and wait a year or two so there’s no problem obtaining copies. Plus, by then discussion questions are easily available online.
We rotate meetings at each others’ homes and the host isn’t required to have food. We communicate primarily through Facebook messenger (since text chains with too many people can get messy).
Eventually we added a couple more rules: no non-fiction (we found out the hard way and we all agreed not to do it again) and nothing too long (also found out the hard way, 600 pages is the limit).
Joining a book club is a great way to meet new people and Mt. Lebanon Library has many different sponsored (led by a librarian) and non-sponsored group [2]s.
In our case, it was a great way to stay in touch with old friends that started to drift away as our kids got older and we entered different phases of life.
I won’t go into all the benefits of reading, but I will mention the not-so-obvious benefits of talking about it afterwards. There are books that when you finish, you feel like you’ve lost a friend. Talking about it helps you mourn the loss, celebrate the experience, ponder points you missed and realize new perspectives.
Just like any group, people quickly fall into roles. There’s one who always strays off topic and one who tries to reel everyone back in. One who finishes every book, regardless of how boring it might be, and the one who never finishes, even when it’s a really good one. One who remembers every minor detail and the one who forgets everything. There’s the audio book person, the e-book person, the “I like to hold a real book” person, and as we get older, the large print person. There’s the secretary of the group, who keeps track of what was read and sets the schedule of what to read next. And the one who texts the group the week before, asking for the next title. The outspoken one who always has something to add to the discussion and quiet one who just listens. And then there is the one who forgoes the no food rule to provide snacks.
Our dynamic must work though, because even if someone didn’t read the book, they show up anyways, just for the company.