10.22.2015

booking through thursday

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Do you have people you can talk to about books you’ve read? Share delight in plot twists, explore how much fun it was, or how badly written?

I belong to two book groups. They're very different from each other. My school book group is teachers and retirees who've gathered monthly for at least fifteen years. There are four of us who've been in it that long and others have drifted in and out as they've joined the faculty or left. Now there are a dozen on the mailing list and probably 8 who regularly attend. Everyone brings a book suggestion and signs up for host duties, we set our calendar for the year in September. It's a very fun group. We don't always agree about or enjoy the books but there is always a lively discussion. And snacks. We're big on snacks. Since we meet at school we don't get to have wine but I can imagine this group would be even livelier if wine was consumed.

The new group I belong to is hosted at the local public library. It has been meeting for five months, so it's a fairly new group. The first few meetings, not everyone had finished the book and that was sort of inhibiting to those of us who had completed, since we were conscious of spoiling the books. But we got over that and now have some good discussions. Because I've been in a reading group before, I've become the default leader of this group, which is weird, because I certainly didn't set out to have control over the book group. But I've been the only one who's made suggestions. There's one woman who is zealously trying to be the leader (and I welcome her to it) but the other group members look to me to reign her in. If I process her behavior more, I could describe how over the top she is in trying to guide discussion--she has been known to tell people that their impressions of books are wrong.

Everywhere I go I talk about books. And my family are all avid readers, so we share a lot of talk about books and pass along titles. Some of the best book discussions I've been part of were around books that were not liked--and defending why the book was a dud.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Book clubs are a great place to discuss books! I agree that discussing the duds can make for super interesting conversation!