All You Need To Build A Book Club

What would you do if you woke up in the hospital and 10 years of your life was gone, forgotten? You are living ten years ago. The rest of your world is living 10 years into a future you know nothing about.

Have you ever wondered what living with you was like from your dog's perspective? Have you ever wondered what their dreams, goals and passions are?

These are the last two stories we've read in my book club. Respectively, What Alice Forgot and The Art of Racing in the Rain.

I am lucky to count myself a member of a group of ladies who are intelligent, beautiful, fun, strong, interesting, different, and who happen to just all love books. We call ourselves Reading Between the Wines. We meet once a month, rotating hostess duties at our homes. The hostess is in charge of choosing the book to be discussed on her month, providing the food and everybody brings a bottle of wine. Mostly, we have a blast and get to be together once a month for an afternoon. I've had several people ask me how I found the book club. I didn't, we made it together in March of 2013.

 

The original members got together and made a list of all of the books that all of us had on our wish lists, a basic structure of how we'd like to spend our time together, and a calendar of the first couple months of hostesses.

 

We've lost and gained members in that time and currently have nine members. I'll tell you, this is really a perfect number to shoot for for a couple reasons. First, not everyone can make it every month but nine ensures that there are still several of us together. There aren't so many ladies that people feel like they didn't get to share their thoughts. No one gets overly tired of being the hostess. And finally, it's such a fabulous mix of ladies. Our members include, 2 friends that I graduated high school with, 1 friend I have known since the first grade, 1 friend I met in college through really odd circumstances, 1 friend I met through an ex-boyfriend, a co-worker of one of the high school friends, a woman I've always known of through mutual friends but just got to know well in the last year, and a woman who married an old high school acquaintance.

 

Here are several of us last fall on a beautiful post discussion walk.

 

 

We are a wonderful mix of working moms and stay-at-home moms, moms to human kiddos and moms to fur babies, professions within those of us who work outside the home, ages (26-48), family types, ideas, opinions, and passions. That's what I love most. Nine different women's lives all come together once a month to discuss ideas, literature from the great to the trashy, and often just drink, laugh, and share. I've gotten to read some fantastic book I may not otherwise have discovered. We even have a Facebook page where we can share great articles, book lists, funny memes, and pictures of our time together.

 

 

My advice is to not look too hard for a group to join. You have great friends already. Many of them like to read. Get together and get started! Even if it's just an excuse for some child-free, girlfriend drinking time. And if you're looking for book suggestions, man do we have them!

 

Here's all you need to get started:

1) Friends who like to read.

2) Books

3) Wine

4) Once a month childcare arrangements.