The Non Book Club

When I moved to Charlotte about 3 years ago, I joined a book club through a women’s group. It was a group of about 10 women in all stages of life. We were mostly in our 20s & 30s, some of us worked, some of stayed home. Some were single, some married, some had kids. We met monthly and read books we all chose. Some discussions were riveting, some were boring and some didn’t take place. We talked about our lives, our vacations, our jobs, our stresses. Then, we fell apart. The last meeting took place at my house and from the moment the guests arrived I could feel it disintegrating. Only 2 women showed up. I hadn’t read the book. My dog decided to be super puppy and jump all over the guests. One of the women was sick and coughing all over the place. I knew this was it. As I said my goodbyes and waved everyone off , I retreated like a junkie into the dark of my living room and immediately started that chick-lit novel I had been hiding in the back of my bookshelf.

A few months passed and there were 4 of us who serendipitously ran into each other. One of us decided to send out an email to meet for dinner and the non-book club was started. The 4 of us met for dinner monthly. One of us got married and moved away and then we invited a few more to join us. We talked about our lives, our jobs, our families and books. Yes, we had all continued to read and talked about books, shared titles & reviews.

We recently met in November and I decided that I was going to propose we start the book club again. I socialized the idea with CityCrab. He said he didn’t realize that we had disbanded (in interest of confusion, I continued to call it my book club meeting.) And it was then that I decided we must give this another shot. I brought it up at dinner with all kinds of caveats….we could continue to meet at restaurants & we didn’t have to bring discussion questions & we could still talk about other stuff.

So, it was successful. We’re meeting in January as a non-book club to determine a book. And will meet thereafter as a book club. It feels like the perfect time to start something not so new.