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How 3.5 Book Clubs Helped Me Grow This Year
For most of my life, I avoided invitations to join book clubs. I had way too many books on my “to read” list already. Not to mention all the reading I was doing as research for my work. Then along came the pandemic, and I accidentally found myself in 3.5 book clubs.
The first started not long after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. One of the founders of our Random Acts of Kindness group suggested we all read the book How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and discuss it. At the time, we were meeting every other month, so we chose to discuss the book on the off-month and discovered we really enjoyed reading together. We decided to keep the book club going. Every other month, the host chooses three books (mostly novels, but sometimes nonfiction) and the rest of us vote in order to arrive at our top choice.
Of the 15 or so books we’ve read, only two were on my personal to-read list. A couple, though, were by authors I’d always meant to try or on topics I’ve been wanting to learn more about. We’ve read some really good books, a few so-so selections, and one clunker.
The other book club has a similar pandemic origin story. Three of my writer friends and I had been getting together every other month to talk shop and just gab. At some point, I recommended a book and suggested we read it together. It was supposed to be a…
