How To Start A Book Club

After a handful of fun book club meetings, I thought I would share how the one I attend was loosely started and tips for sustaining the club.

1. Brainstorm a list of people who might be interested. Consider personalities and interests in how that will make up a discussion group.

2. Get an initial meeting date and time set up, then send out invites via email or snail mail. This invite could include a book to discuss the first month, or could just be a come-if-you're-interested-and-give-your-input-for-our-first-book. 

Designed by Michelle from The One With The Cupcakes

At the first meeting:

3. Have everyone introduce themselves and the types of books they typically enjoy reading. This is fun as you will see commonalities over what types of books best fit your group. (Our group seems to love historical novels, particularly related to WWI & II.)

4. Assign the next couple months/weeks worth of books based off of people's suggestions and settle on your dates. One member made bookmarks for us with the dates on the back and a quote on the front.

5. Discuss where book club will be held. Always at same person's house or a rotating host? Ours is always at the same house just because...well she is the most pulled together, stable one of the bunch. She will laugh when she reads that, but in reality, I'd say mostly it is because out of everyone, she probably has the best space for hosting a group.

6. If desired, have people sign up to bring refreshments. (Maybe one person for drinks, one for finger food.) Our first meeting just happened to have refreshments appropriate to our book, which was fun.

7. Decide if you want to have someone think of questions to answer, or use the ones that are often in the back of the books or easy to find online. This person will "lead" the meeting more or less. It can be a rotating basis, or whoever  We start with a few questions but are really good at getting off topic.

Tips for sustaining the club:

8. Do your best to stick to the schedule (dates/times/book selection) as it will be easier for everyone to follow, but be okay with being flexible to accommodate schedules. Obviously, everyone may not be able to come every month. For example, December was crazy since we meet on the weekends, so we didn't read a book that month.

9. Encourage everyone to come even if they don't get through the book. A lot of the time, they will still be able to participate with the limited knowledge they have. Of course this depends upon the style your meetings run - whether the discussion is heavily based around the issues in the book, the academic literary elements of the book or a combination of the two. Ours tend to lean toward the issues in the book, which everyone can usually voice their opinion on.

For other tips on running a book club, check out these tips, or Oprah's assistant's pointers.

A few of the books we have read  so far:

• The Help (August)
• The Body Project (September)
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven (October)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (November)
• Bossy Pants (January)
• The Lemon Tree (February)
• The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (March)
• Little Princes (April)

This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.

Lemony Buddies (Muddy Buddies Modified)

I haven't posted about Book Club the past couple months, mostly because I have been a lame member and not finished the books. Well, we took December off, so I've just missed November, which I finished after the meeting date (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society) and January (Bossypants).

February's book was The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. I was the one who suggested this book because I really wanted to read it and had bought it at Powell's. This month, I committed the ultimate book club member faux pas by not finishing the book I recommended! The only excuse worth sharing is that I was swept away by a Costco impulse buy, the book Little Princes by Conor Grennan.

To alleviate a little bit of the guilt at our meeting, I made a modified version of the infamously addicting muddy buddies that I saw here. Essentially, the recipe swaps peanut butter and chocolate for lemon juice/zest and white chocolate to coat the Chex mix before powder sugaring the smithereens out of it all.

9 cups Chex mix (1 regular size box of cereal)

1 1/4 cup white vanilla baking chips

1/4 cup butter or margarine

2-4 tsp grated lemon peel (depends on how lemon-y you want it to taste)

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 cups powdered sugar

gallon size resealable food storage plastic bag

Measure the cereal into a large bowl. Microwave chips, butter, lemon peel and juice for 1 minute. Stir. Continue to microwave for 20-30 seconds, stirring in between, until smooth. Pour mixture into bowl of cereal and stir until evenly coated. Next, pour the cereal mixture into gallon bag and add powdered sugar. I like to pour a little cereal, then sugar and repeat until it is all layered in the bag to make for a more evened coating.

It really is a tasty switch up from the traditional muddy buddy Chex mix and so easy to make too! Although, Michelle totally outdid me in the food category for book club this month with this Brownie Berry Pizza.


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page. Go check them out for more inspiration!

October Book Club: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't able to attend book club this month. I have read Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie and found so many notable quotes I just loved. After finishing The Five People You Meet in Heaven, I decided to make a printable of one of my favorite quotes to share.

I made the 3 versions. You should be able to click the image to enlarge it, then right click it to save it. Next time, I will try to get google docs or another one of those sharing sites hooked up.

Each should print 6x6 inches. Let me know if you would like another color scheme. And next time it feels like the end - whether good or bad - remember, it's just the beginning. I find so much peace in hope for the future and thank God for new beginnings.


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.

September Book Club: The Body Project

I can't believe we already had our second book club meeting this past weekend. This month, we met to discuss The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. I'll be honest, but I have to whisper it, because I'm just slightly embarrassed: I didn't finish the entire book. Turns out, it was no big deal, mostly because I was still able to participate in the discussion since it was a non-fiction book, with most of our questions being very relevant to our own experiences as females. And no one tsk, tsk'd me.  

Warning: I'm not attempting to write a synopsis or critique of the book, because I'm not in school and just like to think, however scatter-brained that turns out. So for now, just offering a few thoughts I found intriguing for you to chew on a bit.

The book dives into historical detail (through the 1990s) of issues girls face today. Brumberg focuses on how "...the body has become most girls' primary project, creating a degree of self-consciousness and dissatisfaction that is pervasive and often dangerous" and the various reasons why this is the case. It was a very informative book and will have you go "ah-ha" at moments, want to cry the next, scream or rip a pillow in half in frustration.

With the best chocolate chip cookies you can buy from a store in the world (shout out to Safeway & Thanks, Alison!), pink lemonade (my favorite) and a veggie try with yummy dip (Thanks, Amy!), we discussed what we "have gained and lost as American women shed the corset and the ideal of virginity for a new world of dieting and body sculpting, sexual freedom and self expression." A time or two, the question arose, are we freer now than we were 100 years ago? Depends on your definition of freedom. What do you think?

I would highly recommend this book to any woman, particularly those struggling with body image or wanting to gain a broader range of knowledge on the subject. I plan on reading a few more books on the topic, including re-reading Reviving Ophelia.

To wrap this up, I wanted to take a quick moment and point you in the direction of the lowest part of the right hand column on this page. Scroll now. A little more, and there you see it: my GoodReads widget displaying some books I have read. If you like to read, want to get back into reading or fall somewhere in the middle, check out GoodReads. It is a brilliant website that allows you to create lists of books you want to read, have read and are currently reading. You can see reviews on books from your friends and others, as well as write reviews and rate books yourself. There is a phone app too! It has one of those sweet bar code scanners that I just love, but has proven to be very dangerous near any bookstore, as I can go a bit overboard with it. Anyways, there is my unofficial, unpaid plug for another tech service I use. Do as you wish.

August Book Club: The Help

This past Saturday was our first book club meeting. My friends Michelle and Allison spear-headed pulling together this group of ladies from college, church and the neighborhood. We vary in age and interests which makes me even more excited to be part of this group. The book we all read for our meeting in August was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

We ate caramel cake made by Michelle, in honor of Minny's famous, best-in-Mississippi, Southern favorite dessert.

We had a great discussion, guided by the questions in the back of the book by the author.  If you have yet to read The Help, I would highly recommend it. It is one of my favorite books and I will be reading it again at some point. The characters are incredible; it is not a bird's eye, gloss-over of civil rights' movement issues, but one which exposes such real-life emotions of both African-Americans and whites in the 1960's.

Allison made cute bookmarks for everyone with a quote I just love. On the flip side are all the dates for our future meetings printed on one side, which will be very helpful.
 

I went to see the movie with my mom and Grammy. It was awesome to see the characters come alive, but at the same time, almost harder listening and watching people discriminate one another than reading it. Overall, it was a pretty darn good adaptation of the book and the actresses were great. If you don't read the book, at least go see the movie or rent it because it is so relevant and important to think about the issues in the story.