Not to brag, but our book club has been together since 2014. It started with this email from Kate and me:
"Kate and Angela want to start a book club and would love if you joined. Here are our thoughts:
1. We will drink while discussing books
2. Drinking while reading is your choice but strongly encouraged
3. No shitty books shall be chosen. While shitty is a subjective term, it shall be defined here as cliché, trite and trashy. While not all New York Times Bestsellers qualify as such, most do.
4. Despite the sound of number three, we will not be douchy or lit snob about this. Just don't want to read stupid shit.
5. We will meet twice/ month at a house or bar and chat about the book over food and booze.
6. How will we choose books? On the first meeting, proposed date Dec 3, we will each write the names of 2 books we would like to read and put them in a hat. Each time we choose a book, one member will pull two titles out of the hat and decide between the 2. A majority vote can veto the choice."
We may have mentioned this before: we think we are hilarious.
As it stands now, we have only followed rule number 1. But it definitely has worked out for the best.
Many of the people who joined that first year only stopped in once. There are 4 of us left from that first meeting. And we have added 3 more over the years.
There are 2 ways.
1. At the end of a meeting, everyone goes through their TBR list and throws out a few they want to read. They may describe it or read something from Good Reads to inform the rest of us. Then we basically vote.
2. If we're pressed for time, we all submit titles to someone who has offered to create a survey, and we vote electronically.
Since we have been together so long, we are great friends. So most of the book club meetings are not about the book. We catch up on each other's lives and current events. We eat and drink, but we DEFINITELY talk about the book.
One thing we added a few years ago was book projects. That's right, we do book reports (4 of us are teachers). Obviously, reports is not exactly an accurate description of what we create. It is much more open than that. In last month's blog, we highlighted one of the projects - a children's book. But we have had food and drink presentations, games, dioramas, recitations and homemade book inspired gifts!
One year, I did a March Madness Bracket with all of the books we had read up until that point. I was incredibly satisfied when Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin won. Now to be fair, books were matched arbitrarily. The first round was done by the year and in a random order and we just voted on our favorite of that match and moved it to the next round. I am sure there are many better ways to structure that.
At our most recent book club meeting, one of the original members created a trophy! At each meeting, we will now vote for a "book club winner." How do you win book club, you ask? We vote.
Of course, at that book club the woman who made the trophy won book club. I mean...that is the greatest idea ever. However, she declined the award because she wanted someone else to take home the trophy because each time someone takes it home, they get to add a piece to the trophy. I was the default winner because I had made a game for my project that we all played during book club. The game was Rummy-esque and required members to explain why they chose to lay down their cards. It fostered good conversation.
So based on the longevity of our book club and the super creative humans in it, we declare our book club is the best.
We'd love to hear about your book club!
Comments will be approved before showing up.
