Book Club Beginnings

I’ve always loved reading, but as a mom with young children, I found that it took a back seat to Netflix for a few years. I decided I didn’t like that. I wanted to make reading a priority, and I’d always loved the idea of a book club. One summer day when I was at swim practice with my kids, I saw a friend with a stack of books in hand and asked her if she’d be interested in starting a book club with me. We each asked 4 friends, and before you could say “Jane Austen,” we had ourselves a group.

When I moved from Houston, I knew I wanted to be in a book club in Los Angeles – but I literally knew no one. Then, about six months after we’d moved, I was sitting reading when Lea, a girl my husband works with, saw me and started talking books. Book lovers, you know what I mean. We get all excited when someone else is READING. Lea and I were basically acquaintances at this point, but I asked her if she’d want to start a book club. “Do you know people?” I asked her. Since Lea actually had friends, I let her do the inviting. As I got to know people, I would ask if they liked to read, and essentially if they said yes, I invited them to be in our club. That’s really the only requirement for a book club – which is one of the things I love so much about it. Sometimes the only thing you have in common is that you read the same book. That means you can learn a whole lot from someone who looks, thinks, and lives differently than you.

Our Los Angeles book club had our first meeting in August of 2015, so we’ve been going strong for two years now. We meet once a month, rotate homes, and everyone brings something yummy to share. We try to keep 12 members so everyone is hosting once a year, and if people are missing, 8-10 seems like a great number for good discussions. Lea always prints out the discussion questions – you can find discussion questions for almost every book online – and she lovingly keeps our group on topic – or tries to. It’s honestly one of my favorite nights of the month.

Here’s what we’ve read over the past two years!

So what are you waiting for? Find some people who love to read and discuss, and start your own book club!