Book Club Launch

Today was the first meeting of our neighborhood book club. All of us are retirees, but we decided to hold future meetings in the evening so more neighbors may attend. We realized summer isn't the best time to launch a book club, but we'll see how it goes. Maybe by September when vacation time is over we'll have worked out some of the kinks.

Rhonda wisely researched the local library's book club reads with the thought that there will be several copies of those titles available for check out. From that list we selected Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It may prove to be a little too "dark" for some of us, but I already had it on my bookshelf. So I'm moving it up to the top of my reading list.

I've never belonged to a book club before. I've sort of liked the idea, but also hesitated. My taste in books sort of jumps around. I'm currently reading Sandra McDonald's The Outback Stars (science fiction) while skimming Heaven's Net is Wide (fantasy) for research, and I'm a few pages into Super Freakonomics. Which is why I wasn't so sure that I wanted to take on a reading assignment for a book club -- especially if I wasn't so interested in the book.

So we'll see. I'm not reading the classics even though I love Dickens, Trollope, and the other 19th Century Brits. I find myself escaping into mysteries, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. I'm also reading young adult fantasy novels -- my chosen writing genre. I seem to avoid literary fiction and most nonfiction. I'm not into memoirs. But I guess the idea of a book club is to try books that I would normally pass up.

Plus -- it's a great means to become better acquainted with the neighbors.