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I think our best discussion revolved around The Girls by Lori Lansens. It was a situation that none of us could personally relate to, but the emotions were so evocative and raw. We had very deep discussions about how people relate and how close we really are to each other. The depth of kindness and mistreatment we’ve had at the hands of others was also brought up.
whenever I tried a book group things didn’t work out well because not everyone read, or if they had they didn’t quite finish the book we were reading.
In the past years, I’ve been a huge fan of bookcrossing. Whatever books I end up buying or finding, I’ll stick the labels to them and usually end up giving the books to my friends after, or leave them to the wild adventure… and so often I’ve noticed people who absolutely love a book they find end up getting a copy for themselves of the same book to leave one of them continue the journey… and you’ll never know where they end up. My books so far have ended anywhere between Norway and Argentina, Canada and Indonesia and generally all over Europe.
I’ve met local readers for the same hobby, both in Ireland and now in Texas. There usually isn’t a book of month, but once you know someone likes e.g. thrillers or scifi or specific themes or authors, then those books will end up being there and read and discussed by the others too. So no matter what type of books there are out there, someone will love those. I love seeing what other people think of a book I loved, and also making my friends discover totally new authors or genres.
Every one of our book club meetings are engrossing.
We choose books carefully, and the eight or nine of us have the book read and some even post-it sections they want to read and discuss. Our last meeting MUDBOUND took the stage, and because half of our members are from the south, it was very educational for the rest of us to hear first hand accounts of the shocking attitudes of white people toward their black neighbors.
We have now begun reading THE HELP and I suspect our next discussion will be pretty lively too.
As a member of the Rowdy Readers Book Club in Brighton, Colorado, we have enjoyed great success for 8 years with vibrant, intelligent readers. A favorite book in 2009 was The Zookeeper’s Wife. In conjunction with the book discussion, the book club visited the Denver Zoo. Historic animal facilities at this zoo that were similar to exhibits that would have existed at the Warsaw Zoo were identified. This tour gave club members an idea of the kinds of housing that were used to hide Jews at the Warsaw Zoo during World War II.
My favorite memory was when my book club met up at a local restaurant. By the end of the discussion the waiter and owner had joined us and another diner! We had a great discussions and added 2 more members!
Every month that my group gets together we laugh so hard we leave with sore tummies. And the books that we read aren’t necessarily funny. It’s just sharing that passion of reading and having girl time that makes it so enjoyable. And what’s interesting is that somehow or other the topic of sex ALWAYS comes up; even when some of our books have NO mention of sex. Why is that?!
I’m in a book club with a great bunch of women. We are a mixed groub of readiers, but always willing to read diverent books. We just finished read the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. One of the members meet a English couple and the man lived there on the Island. We are going to read Three Cups of Tea and it turns out his wife as a child lived with her missonery parents there. So they are going to come and speak to us. Everyone is excite about this.
I’ve been an absolute failure at book groups. I love to read, and I live in New York City. With over 8 million folks around, you wouldn’t think it would be too hard to find a group of people to get together, but it has been, occasionally with disasterous consequences. I guess the worst one was when a friend of mine started a “networking” book club with the intention of reading business and networking books and discussing new and successful strategies…or so she said. As it turns out, she really only started it to get a few dates with bookish banker types and she wanted to use me as the wing-woman. Yikes!
Our best book club discussion was after we read “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. We were all inspired to donate articles of clothing, handbag swaps, cash to libraries, or donate our time… we all decided that one thing we will do is not only be a book club but also become volunteers for something we all agree upon. I think in each of our lives we have been touched by the ability to help someone else. I know these ladies have stood up for me and helped me when I was down and out. Once I got up on my feet again, I returned the favor. I helped a friend out. We continue to keep paying it forward so to speak. That was the best discussion ever!!
Our best book club meeting was about The Help. Everyone loved the book and we were amazed this was the author’s first novel. Her words literally jumped off the page. She wrote exactly the way the characters would speak. We hope it becomes a movie! The toilet scene would be priceless!
I work @ a bookstore and in our morning meetings
we discuss and talk about books. I read an advance reader copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
(before it was published) and told everyone this title
would become a bestseller. And it did indeed!! It is such a great story I have been telling all my customers and collegues about it! Can’t wait to read the next bestseller!!!!
I enjoy all of them so much im not sure i can pick out a single one. I enjoy presenting a power point presentation i made to go along with our reading of Pillars of the Earth. I had found pictures of the actual sites described in the book. It was fun to see the book come alive for us all and to admire the great cathedrals.
Since our book group is captivated with reading and appreciate so many of the wonderful books out there we have to choose from a great selection. There are always emotions involved and discussions that can last all night. We become so involved with the characters and the story that we forget they are fictional. One book that was unforgettable was Sarah’s Key. This story was heartbreaking and we knew that it was going to be hard to talk about the experiences throughout the story. A historical book such as this lingers in our minds for a long time and makes a deep impression.
I started a book club in my neighborhood last year that now has 18 women of all ages meeting monthly. One of the members suggested we read ‘Lottery’ by Patricia Wood & arranged a skype meeting with her. She was entertaining & funny but the best part was that she lives on a boat in Hawaii & took us on a tour of her ‘home’… so fun!
I most enjoyed our discussion of The Road by Cormac McCarthy…it led to a movie outing with the whole group!
The best group story is about how all of us actually manage to get together. We have to enlist the help of our husbands and orher family members to take care of the kids or the seniors that we have in our lives. After we settle down it’s great to review the latest book and share our ideas and perspectives.
My book group has changed over the years as we life changes happen with people moving away and having babies. For choices and inspiration, we have read various sites (inc this great one) and one of the best places has been the subway- noticing what others find engrossing and checking it out ourselves. Looking forward to the continuing journey
One of my favorite book groups had 12 people, each of whom picked a book choice for a monthly meeting. We picked titles out of a hat to decide the reading order and whomever chose that book to read was the discussion leader for that group. We always met somewhere that had something to do with the book. For example: We read “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jumpa Lahiri and ate at an Indian restaurant. “Harry Potter,” met at a restaurant called Crumpets; “The Odyssey” met at a Greek restaurant, etc. The atmosphere added to the discussion and many restaurant owners took an interest in the books, as well.
Our book club has been meeting montly for over 2 years now and we have had many wonderful discussions. We usually will have one or two of our 16 members that have not finished the book when we meet but most of them end of leaving saying that they are most definitely going to finish it after hearing the discussion. Our most memorable book club discussion was over the book, “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. Many in the group did not particulary like the book but it made for a wonderful discussion. We discussed many different elements of the book including religion, doing whatever it took to survive, fantasy vs. reality, ect. We all interpreted different parts of the book differently and it was wonderful to hear all of the different interpretations and emotions that this book evoked. No matter what book we read and whether I liked the book or not, I always gain a new perspective on the book after attending book club.
I have a great book club, we get together every month for the last almost 4 years. Our first book was Angry housewives eating bonbons and our last was the Help. We have read everything from Gone with the Wind, and Roots, to Kon-tiki and A thousand Spendid sons. We modeled our club around the angry housewives. We try to coordinate the food with the books, and decorations.
We have eight members in our Mountain Mamas book club. We are a combination of very busy ranch and town women. We actually love 95% of our book discussions. One of our favorites and most enlightening was The Soloist by Steve Lopez. Since it is about a homeless man with schizophrenia, one of our members brought a friend, who most of already knew, who is in graduate school to become a phsychiatric nurse. She is almost finished with her studies and was able to give us a lot of insight into the life of a schizophrenic.
We are a smaller book club, consisting mostly of busy moms. We try to be realistic and give ourselves 4-6 weeks between meetings…based on the length of the book. We change moderators each meeting, based on enthusiasm for the book and ability to keep us on subject. We also started to bring books to swap amongst ourselves and not necessarily discuss. We did have a bit of a dispute on who would be first to borrow my copy of A Full Plate. I teased saying they just wanted a picture book for easy read.
There are 6 of us who formed a book club 10 years ago and meet each month. This year we’re going as a group to NYC for our 10 year anniversary! After reading over 100 books, our favorite author by far is Barabara Kingsolver. We read her for our first book, Poisonwood Bible. We all laugh because it was a huge book for the first book! We’ve read everything from Harry Potter to The Good Earth from The Devil Wears Prada to Cold Mountain. Each month we record our thoughts about the book in a “diary”. We call ourselves G.A.L.S (Girls Awesome Literary Society) and no matter that we are a very diverse group we have been through a lot together and look forward to seeing each other each month. We talk about our book and sometimes how it connects to our own world and our own feelings and we catch up on each other’s lives. I have loved books my whole life but these girls make my book reading SO much richer. I can’t imagine my world without them now. My family knows, nothing comes between me & my book club girls!
I love my book club, right now there r 6 of us and we take turns picking the book and holding our group at each others homes. As for summer since everyone is busy with the kids we will have a meeting at a park or an early morning meeting at a coffee shop, bookstore or the library.
All of are meetings are my favorite the last book we did was for the book Three Cups of Tea, which our host set up a tea party type of atmosphere. The book was great and I what I love the most about book club meetings is how 6 people can read the same book and the opinions and thoughts very so much.
We meet once a month and our club is club The Mom’s Top Shelf readers.
My book club has been meeting for ten years! We each pick and lead a book and lead the discussion and host one meeting a year. Our favorite book was Poisonwood Bible, our first book,(long before Oprah!) If the book is in an interesting town or there is a play or movie based on the book we make a weekend trip for ourselves and enjoy a girls trip and lots of wine. After ten years our children have grown and some of us have moved to other parts of the country but we still manage to get together regularly and reconnect over books.
My reading group has grown out of a stitching group. We’re a wide variety of women of all ages that met through our love of cross stitch. We started meeting at our local needlework store weekly to stitch (and bitch and gossip). We recently decided to add a dedicated reading group meeting to the schedule. I’m very excited about it. We have very intelligent women from all kinds of backgrounds in our group. They all bring such interesting insight to the discussions.
It is so hard to pick a favorite book from all we have read, but our group The Crazy Ladies celebrated our ten year anniversary last year and we chose to re-read the very first book. As there were only 3 original members it was a great book to re-read. Elizabeth Berg’s Talk Before Sleep. It is amazing how good it was to go back to visit this wonderful book again. We have gone to see Elizabeth read from new upcoming books a few times and we went to see the adaption of her book turned into a play “The Pull of the Moon” (my favorite book of hers) so she is a definite favorite of ours, ESPECIALLY after she went out with us the one night after doing a reading.It was such a surreal moment to be sitting with a favorite author and talking with her about her writing, what she is reading and how she gets ideas and how she gets bogged down in life just as we do. Our group basically goes from house to house each month, we have 11 members, the member that chooses the book for the month is in charge of place to hold the meeting, food and a gift bag of things that are to remind of us things from the book..so we have come home with some very unusual things..lol. But it is always lots of fun and we try to make the food match what we have read about in the books. We discuss the books, but also our lives and we have become a very diverse group of women into a very tight knit group of friends. Love the power of books!!
Our book club has been meeting for close to 8 years and one of the greatest things about it is how we have grown as readers as well as friends. We have challenged ourselves to read books we probably would not have read as individuals. Our best discussions come from books that we disagree about. Although we don’t always like the book we come away with a better appreciation of it and our conversations have become richer and deeper over the years. I especially enjoy our book talks with the authors present as it brings a different appreciation of the story. Our eclectic group has never been afraid to speak their mind and love to get the authors response. Our book club has enriched our reading lives as well as the lives of family and friends that we pass books on too. Our books like our friends continue to touch our lives as well as the lives of others. Book Club, is a blessing!
My favorite meeting of the East Valley Book Addicts was this past month. I had won an advanced copy of Dr. Laura’s new book It’s Not Him…It’s You, and I brought it so everyone could look at it. Well, the book is filled with pictures of naked men and women in compromising positions as it discusses how to set your sex life on fire. We were like a bunch of junior high kids looking at this book, and I should know because I am a junior high school librarian! What was even funnier is that the most conservative member of our group took it home “to show her husband”. The group is still talking about it!
One of our best book club nights was when we all listened and supported our friend who was going through some marital issues. She felt so much better by the end of the evening and had some tangible steps to take back to her marriage.
As for a book discussion, probably our most lively discuss was about “American Wife,” as many in our group are Democrats, but they could sympathize with the Laura Bush character. It was less “Bush bashing” and more about the person and her resolve.
We have a very occasionally meeting book club for staff at the library I work at. It’s always very interesting to hear co-workers’ opinions on the stuff you read. It gives you a very different insight into each other. Hearing these sometimes differing opinions is also helpful for doing readers’ advisory. You end up with other reasons for recommending a book or helping a patron find a book that fits them.
Our book group has it’s liveliest discussions when the subjects of religion, sex or politics are mentioned in the books we’re reading. We try to keep an open forum, so no comment is felt to be abusive, yet we dig out views that we sometimes didn’t know ourselves to have. Biases are found in most writing in newspapers, magazines and on the internet. It’s fun to notice when your feelings get in the way of learning about a new culture or tradition as we compare and contrast ideas new to us. Like I said, it’s a lively group open to discussion and interpretation.