BOOK CLUBS!

by Bea Tifton

Do you belong to a book club? I actually belong to two of them, both very different. My first ever book club was more about drinking wine than discussing the books.  It fell apart as people got married, had small children, and basically moved on. 

Do you belong to a book club?

Now, I belong to one that has been together for twenty years. Each month a different hostess chooses a book and a restaurant. The first time I attended, I had read the book and even prepared some discussion questions. 

We met and chatted for a bit when I asked, “Aren’t we going to discuss the book?” which was met with laughter all the way around. 

One charter member turned to the other and said, “She read the book. How cute. Newbies.” 

We do discuss the books most months, for about fifteen minutes.  It’s a delightful group of women with interesting stories so I can’t complain.  They’ve known each other so long that there’s always a lot to talk about.

My other current book club is a little more intense. Those ladies meet in the back room of a local restaurant each month and everyone has read the book. We discuss it at length. The discussions are thought provoking and I’ve read some books I never would have read otherwise. When the much loved leader recently retired and moved away, yours truly volunteered to continue the tradition. Whew! No pressure there.  I like the women a great deal, have been friends with most of them for years, and think that it’s fun to eat at this restaurant in my favorite part of town each month. I think about things in a different way after book club.

I often think about things in a
different way after book club.

If you don’t belong to one, or have access to one, start one yourself. I have some guidelines in mind.

1.      How will the books be selected? Decide whether the leader is going to choose the books or the members are going to take turns.  Some book clubs even have nominations and vote on which ones will be included. For the one I’m leading, I chose, “Strong Women through the Decades.” We have books set chronologically from the 1700s to modern times.

2.      Where will you meet? Are you going to meet in people’s homes, in the same place each month, or in varied places? It’s nice not to meet in people’s homes so there’s not as much pressure to entertain, but some people love the intimacy. Choosing different restaurants adds variety, but being a regular is fun, too, and the restaurant will usually be accommodating if they know you will be returning each month.

3.      What norms do you have? Are mature themes okay? Is it acceptable to use salty language during the discussion? Are kids okay? What age groups will you include? Will you have men and women? Will you stay away from politics and religion? (Always a good idea unless you absolutely know you all think in the same vein.)

4.     Who will attend? Is the leader the one who personally extends each invitation or can members bring friends?

Going to book club, whether we discuss the book or not, is a vital part of my socializing each month. Those women are my support system. We’ve seen each other through life’s highs and lows. We respect each other. We can be vulnerable. It’s okay to be smart in a book club. You don’t have to compete in a book club. We don’t have to agree on everything or like the same exact things because we have the book in common. Maybe that’s part of the mass appeal. I plan to continue to be a member in both of mine for years to come. Heck, I’m even going to read the assigned books.

I'm even going to read
the assigned books.

Bea Tifton is currently working on her first book, a cozy mystery with silliness, shenanigans, and maybe even a book club. She lives in Texas with several spoiled pets and is eagerly reading her next book club selection.

BOOK DIVAS

The variety of book clubs is endless: Oprah, Goodreads, Amazon kindleboards, bookstores, community groups, churches, and I’m sure I’ve missed some. If you’re not in a book club, I strongly encourage you to join or form your own. Today I want to tell you about the group to which I belong.

We call ourselves Book Divas for the simple reason that we tired of the blah term “book club.” The founder was an independent bookstore owner, whose motive was for us to buy the books from her store. The result was that we are a diverse group, which works out well. The founder’s health has forced her to sell her store and move into assisted living, so she no longer participates. The club has continued without her.

HOW BOOK DIVAS WORKS

Here’s the way ours works, in case you want to form your own. Start with six to twelve people who love to read. Whoever is hostess for the monthly meeting chooses the book and the meeting place. At first, we took turns meeting in our homes. This became too much work for the hostess when it gradually morphed from finger food snacks to meals. Now we usually meet in a local restaurant. We’re lucky enough to have a former caterer member who’s a wonderful cook, and she often invites us to her home the month she’s hostess.

Beginning last year, we planned in January for all year. Last night was our planning meeting for 2013. Each of us who could announced her book choice for this year. Before the meeting, we had poured over the recommended selections at www.bookmovement.com and the best seller lists. Early selection gives us the opportunity to go ahead and order the books and have plenty of time to read them. Usually this is not important, but past books have included time-consuming tomes like Ken Follet’s PILLARS OF THE EARTH. Not a quick read, even though I loved the story. Another benefit to this plan is that those who don't want to buy the book have time to obtain it from the library.

BOOK CLUB PLUSES

Because we are a diverse group, we read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction. One woman always chooses the latest Mary Higgins Clark novel. Our former caterer member usually chooses a sad book set in a foreign country, but this year has chosen THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot. Another member usually chooses a biography, but for this year has chosen a mystery, CARVED IN BONE, by Jefferson Bass. Other books for 2013 include FLIGHT BEHAVIOR by Barbara Kingsolver and A TWIST IN THE TALE by Jeffrey Archer. Occasionally, the group has chosen one of my books. You get the idea, so  I won’t go on and on.

I write western historical and contemporary romance and an occasional mystery. Those genres are what I most often read for pleasure, with a romantic comedy or romantic suspense tossed into the mix. Because of the Book Divas, I have been forced to expand my interest. This is good for my brain and for conversation. I have also discovered new authors I love from books like SAVING CEE CEE HONEYCUTT (one of my favorites) and will purchase her latest book, LOOKING FOR ME. I won’t mention the few books I hated, but there have been a couple that finishing was akin to having a root canal. ☺

Another plus is that, except the one member from my church, these are wonderful women I would never have known otherwise. Each member is fascinating in her own right, and they are a fun, caring group. Our meetings are filled with laughter as well as literary opinions.

Discussing a book

SETTING UP YOUR CLUB

Be clear what type books you plan for the group. Are you diversifying or will it be all one genre?
Don’t talk politics or religion! Yes, it’s important to have a faith and definite political opinions, but this is not the place to discuss them.
If you don’t like the book, make your comments about the book, not the person who chose it.
Be polite. These are friends and you want to keep their friendship.
Be on time.
Let the hostess know in advance whether or not you will attend.
Read the book for that month. You say, "I don’t like that kind of book." Read it anyway. expand your horizons.
Decide where you will meet. An acquaintance formed a group that meets at a large bookstore, and then they go to a nearby restaurant.

These are simple guidelines. Make up your own if you wish. I’ve benefited from the friendships I’ve formed in Book Divas and treasure the group.

Thanks for stopping by!

WHY WE SHOULD REVISIT THE CLASSICS

Yes, Karen is in England here.
Her family feared they'd never
get their Anglophile home!

By Karen Wojcik Berner


Caroline, thank you for inviting me to guest blog today. I am very excited to be here.


When I was writing A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (The Bibliophiles: Book One), I knew I wanted to bring the main characters of Sarah and Annie together through a book club, but what kind?


Being an English major, the choice was obvious. What could be more fun than discussing the classics? After all, these novels have withstood the test of time and have been shared for hundreds of years.


Do you remember your first classic novel?


Mine was LITTLE WOMEN, which came from a huge box of books my mother had saved from her parents’ house. It was a hardcover, of course, with yellowing pages and a semi-cracked spine. Holding it in my ten-year-old hands, I remember thinking, “What the heck is this? It’s almost crumbling, for goodness sake.” I shrugged and dove in.


I spent the entire day immersed in the lives of Jo and her sisters. So vibrant! So entertaining! I could totally relate to them.


Wait a minute — a mid-1970s kid could identify with the Civil War-era March family?


That, my friends, is the magic of the classics. They tell fantastic tales that bridge time and still entertain us today.


Some expose societal ills and warn us against making the same mistakes. Harriet Beecher Stowe showed the evils of slavery in UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. Charles Dickens illustrated what happens when there is a vast disparity between the rich and poor through DAVID COPPERFIELD and OLIVER TWIST.


Others are shining examples of masterful writing, such as MRS. DALLOWAY. Reading Woolf reminds me how beautiful the English language can be. And no one blends a powerhouse storyline with gorgeous prose better than William Shakespeare.


Then there are the epic tales that still amaze me, stories that, although large in scope, still manage to connect to all of us on an individual basis. MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville, comes to mind here, as well as Homer’s THE ILLIAD and THE ODYSSEY.


At their core, the classics reveal universal truths of human nature, truths that do not change from decade to decade, from century to century. They are the very heart of literature.

The first novel the Bibliophiles read in A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (The Bibliophiles: Book One) is James Joyce’s A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. Edwina Hipplewhite, the book club’s moderator, chose it because of its size, having wanted to ease the newly formed group back into the classics, not overwhelm them, which is a valid point. Some classics can take a lot of work, but they are well worth the effort.


A blurb of Karen's FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM:

Have you ever wanted something so badly it hurt?

Annie Jacobs has dreamed of the day she would become a mother since the first time she held her Baby Tenderlove doll. Unfortunately, biology has
not cooperated with her plan, and she finds herself dealing with a diagnosis of unexplained infertility instead of picking out baby names.


Across town, stay-at-home mom Sarah Anderson is just trying to make it through the grocery store without her toddler hurling a box of rice at a
fellow shopper. She is exhausted from managing the house, a first grader and a toddler, all without any help from her work-obsessed, absentee
husband.


When they meet through a Classics Book Club, each thinks the other one's life is so much better than her own. But is the grass truly greener on the
other side of the fence?


A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (The Bibliophiles: Book One) is available in paperback and e-versions at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.


Barnes and Noble:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Whisper-to-a-Scream/Karen-Wojcik-Berner/e/2940012226655/?USRI=a+whisper+to+a+scream&itm=2


Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Whisper-Scream-ebook/dp/B003DQPKSK

Karen Wojcik Berner lives a provincial life tucked away with her family in the Chicago suburbs. If it was good enough for Jane Austen, right? However, dear Miss Austen had the good fortune of being born amid the glorious English countryside, something Karen unabashedly covets, so much so that she majored in English and communications in college. Like the magnificent Miss Austen, Karen could not help but write about the society that surrounds her.


The result is The Bibliophiles series of novels illustrating the lives of the members of a suburban Classics Book Club. The first, A WHISPER TO A SCREAM, centers on Sarah, a stay-at-home mother of two, and Annie, a PR executive with fertility issues, each of whom thinks the other’s life is far superior to her own. The second novel, set for a February 2012 release, is Catherine Elbert’s journey as she bounces from coast to coast in search of her true self.


To learn more about Karen, please visit her website, http://www.karenberner.com/.


And here's Karen's question for readers:

Which work of classic literature would you like to read again or take a stab at for the first time?

Blogmania Winner/ Book Clubs

BLOGMANIA is over for spring, but Lynda Coker is busily arranging an even greater event for September with even nicer prizes. In the meantime, I'll be awarding prizes occasionally from this blog all through summer and fall, so please visit frequently or follow me. The winner for my BLOGMANIA prize is miller4plusmore@bellsouth.net  I'll email her today and ask for her address so I can mail her prize package. She has 72 hours to answer or I'll have to choose someone else.

And now for my blog on book clubs. I'm a member of a local book club, Book Divas. Our members are all lovely people with whom I enjoy visiting. That's why we spend part of the meeting talking and the other part discussing the book. It's sort of a book club/group therapy session. :)  Our book for May is THE GIRL ON LEGARE STREET by Karen White. This is a sequal to THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET.that we each read and loved earlier in the year.

Book Divas is so pleasant that I hadn't thought much about book club etiquette until my daughter, Darling 2, joined a book club that meets near her home. She absolutely loved it. The members did basically the same thing as in Book Divas. Then (dark, scary music playing here) a new member joined and brought a friend. This new member did not want anyone to mention personal details, only discuss the book. She was a pedantic book Nazi who ruined the spirit of the book club for my daughter. This could have been avoided if the club had a few rules in place.

If you are setting up a book club--and if you're not in one now, I urge you to form one--here are some things you need to discuss and/or set as rules:

1. What is your goal? Do you want this to be a formal, academic book discussion ONLY? If so, mention that at the beginning. If you plan an informal, fun group where the book is only a part of the meeting, state so initially.

2. What type books will you read? Literary, popular fiction, mysteries only, women's fiction, romance? Book Divas read a variety.

3. Where will you meet? We began meeting in member's homes, but that proved onerous. Some hostesses served a full meal and others only a snack. Members didn't know whether to eat before they came or not. Now we meet in a local restaurant so no one has to do extra house cleaning or prepare refreshments.

4. How will you choose books? In ours, the "hostess" for each month chooses the book and where we'll eat. There are online sites that specialize in book club book suggestions, and you might want to investigate these sites. One is Book Movement.

5.What if a member doesn't read the book for that month? Some book clubs levy a fine. Ours doesn't. We urge people to attend even if they haven't finished the book. After all, part of our meeting is fellowship and we enjoy one another's company.

6. Perhaps you'd rather have a book review group. One member could read the book and give a review of it followed by discussion. Or, everyone could read the book and one person formally review it.

7. Be a good sport. The thing that must be avoided is bickering or personal criticism. If I choose a book someone else in book Divas doesn't like, there are no hard feelings. (As far as I know.) One of our members always chooses sad books. I like books with happy endings. I still read the book she chooses. Some of our group like one type of book, some another. We all enjoy mysteries. We strive for a happy medium--a little of everything through the year.

8. How many people will you have in your group? We chose to have twelve. This is a nice number for a discussion, and that means each of us can be hostess only once during the year.

9. Who will send out reminders of the meetings? Who'll alert the restaurant as to how many will be dining?

Book clubs are very enjoyable. I've read many books I would never have read if they hadn't been book club selections. Some of those have become favorites I would have missed without Book Divas. Plus, these are mostly women I hadn't known before book club, yet they have become treasured friends.

Is a book club right for you?