If you’re like me, the only thing more satisfying than reading a good book is telling your friends about it! I am in a couple of book clubs that meet regularly. The one that I manage with my friend T from Nite Lite Book Reviews

Our dear friend Laura, who now has moved back to snowy beautiful N.M., wanted to start a book club at our work. We all worked in the same department at a record label in Burbank. The idea formed and viola! There we were. This was many many years ago and we’re still going strong. Some of us have worked together, but a lot of us are just friends who love to read. We are an opera singer, music publisher, music label director, speech pathologist, lawyer, environmental activist, and more.

I love our book club. It’s one of the few nights out I don’t mind staying out late for. (Late for me now is 9:30pm given that my baby can get up as early as 5am the next morning!

 

What I love about book clubs:

  1. It brings together a group of people who may not have known each other outside of the club. Sure, the core of us know each other through work, but our book club expanded mostly because someone met someone who a.) liked books and b.) thought was nice enough to ask them to join.

2. You meet new friends with different backgrounds. I really love how we all come from different places and cultures and we’re brought together by our love of books. It’s also refreshing to hear different views that I might not have thought about without the discussion!

3. You get to read books that you might normally not have picked yourself. I go through phases where all I want to do is read this one genre. And so book club opens me up to other genres! Especially non-fiction.

4. Wine! Dinner! A night out with the book club is usually some good, positive decompression time with good food, alcohol and catching up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October‘s month was our friend L’s month and she picked The Shining by Stephen King. We dined in Studio City, having a lovely Italian dinner that included pasta, meatballs and lots of wine.

For me, it was an easy read with a real sense of dread and foreboding, even from the first page. That said, I didn’t finish it. Why you may ask? Because while I didn’t have a problem reading it, I wasn’t enjoying it. Given that I have an 18 month old baby at home, I rarely have time to read books and so during that time, I need to really be invested to continue. Sadly, The Shining didn’t do it for me. I have been feeling anxiety and restlessness in real time so this book just exasperated that. However, I do think one day, I will hopefully finish it. I just don’t think it was a good thing for me to read at this moment in time. Also, this book is loooong so I couldn’t imagine feeling that uncomfortable for the whole book. It’s not you, book. It was me all the way.

 

 

Some of our past picks have been:

 

 

 

Are you in a book club? What was your months’ pick? do you have a recommendation for our book club to read?

🙂