For all my book lover friends

For all my book lover friends,

I hope you are able to be part of a book club.  I am fortunate to be part of the most fantastic book club ever.  We are a small, private group, less than a dozen members, with only six or seven able to come to any one meeting.  We are a group cobbled together by friends and friends of friends, and I am amazed at how well we all gel together.  We are young moms, we are intellectuals, we love good stories and important issues.  We dissect the story and themes and often meander off of the book into the real issues at heart.  There is always good food and good conversation.

Before this group I belonged to a very different book club in Toronto.  It was organized by the local library and so the members were wide and varied.  I was by far the youngest member (I was around 25?) and most were retired.  A few were artists.  One was a writer herself.  The discussions were much more on topic, and so interesting to see the book (and the world) through viewpoints vastly different than my own, coloured by many more years of living.  Ours was a little library branch, with a wonderful librarian who must have devoured books more often than meals.  She had a knack for recommending just the right books.  I can still remember, to this day, that when I sent James looking for books for me to read during my first pregnancy (bed rest) he came home with five marvellous reads.  The only instruction I gave was that I wanted to read books set in countries around the world, and all five were a delight to read.  I don't recall her name, or even what she looked like, but she made me want to be a librarian myself.

I love to curl up with a book; reading is by definition a solitary activity.  But I have discovered a different kind of relationship one can develop with a book when the ideas are shared with friends.