BOOK CLUB MEETING

I love to read. I always have. As a kid when the bookmobile came around and they would only let you check out 2 books, I made the other kids check out books for me.

I am the newest member of a book club made up of 12 women. I have been a member for about 18 months, some members have known each other for years, we all have kids and most of us work outside the home.

We meet once a month, usually at the home of the member hosting. The host chooses the book and then leads the discussion. We usually arrive and visit and eat for a while before we sit down to talk about the book. I really enjoy our discussions because we come from so many backgrounds and points of view. It is always lively, usually we are talking over each other.

There is a lot of laughter - like about the time D bought a selection at the used bookstore, started reading, thought it sounded familiar, looked in the back of the book and found her name. She bought back the book she had sold to the bookstore! Then there was the time K couldn't quite follow the discussion and finally realized she had read the wrong book - right author, but a sequel with a similar name and cover.

At the end of the discussion we rank the book by writing style, character development, research, degree of involvement and ending. It is interesting that even the books we dislike, after the talk we find things we actually did appreciate.

Last night we had fun picking a name - forced upon us by the local bookstore in order to get a discount. Once we dismissed the theme of moms, housewives, and boobs - we came up with "books, friends, discussion" - discussion was changed to dessert. Great! The BFD. Uh, oh. Some of the ladies in the group didn't like the idea of presenting themselves as members of the BFD club. Those of us not ladies thought it was a hoot.

The next round was all W's. Women, Wednesdays, Words, Wine, Whine and Whatever. So it was decided that mathematically that was 6 degrees of W. Or W6. Which I can't type properly here, but you get the idea.

This month we read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I'll review it when I am done. January is my month - let me know if you have any book suggestions!