I started attending a book club last year for the first time. I had always wanted to join one, but hadn’t found one that worked with the working teacher/working mom schedule. I made myself make it priority last year so that I could really pay attention to my own thinking and have the opportunity to explore how my own understanding can be impacted by talking with other readers. Since this is such a big part of current research and something we are asking our students to do, I wanted to experience it from the perspective of a reader. I also have a tendency to only read children and young adult fiction, so a book club with grown-ups would also force me to read some books that were “out of the box” for me. I did find some of the “best books” I’ve read last year through the group: Water for Elephants, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Book Thief, and also found one that was hard for me to read: Omnivore’s Dilemma and one that I abandoned: The Echo Maker
Te book club is a nice (and relatively diverse in terms of background, ages, career, etc.) group of women (13 were there this evening) and it is set up so September is the planning meeting for the year. Everyone can bring a book(s) to suggest and we also get input from the local book store owner and reference librarian from the public library. We try to have a non-fiction selection, a “classic”, and a young adult or children’s selection each year. The books we selected for this year are as follows:
The Painted Drumby Louise Erdrich
Loving Frankby Nancy Horan
Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones
Winter’s Taleby Mark Halprin
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Faith Club
The Almost True Diary of a Part Time Indianby Sherman Alexie
Room with a View by E.M. Foster
Infidelby Ayaan Ali
Thread of Grace by Mary Russell
I was pulling for including The Underneath and What is the What-but there’s always next year! I’m sure the next best book i haven’t read is in this list!
