Not Your Momma's Book Club

So, in case you haven't gotten the memo yet, we're in a recession. While this may not be affecting you all that much, my guess is that unless you were incredibly wealthy before the economy headed to the crapper, it probably is. It has affected everyone I know in some way, shape, or form. As I mentioned recently in my hub Bringing Back Friendship, one of the things that I have suffered the most from due to the recession is the loss of social interaction with friends. People are so busy (many having to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet), that there is no time (or money) for vacations, parties, girls' night out, etc anymore. Well, I for one, am not okay with this. I need my girlfriend time. It makes me a better mom, a better wife and a better person when I get that social interaction.

So last summer, my best friend and I were taking a rare road trip together, and started discussing how we could bring that back to our lives. We knew everyone was short on time and money, but we also knew that our friends needed us as much as we needed them. We also realized that one thing most of us have in common is our love of reading. So, we decided to start a book club. We figured even with everyone's busy schedules, surely we could forge one night a month to get together and talk about a book right? And books are cheap. Heck, I've even heard it told that they have this place where you can borrow books.....for FREE!

So, in that weekend, Books, Broads & Booze Book Club was born.

Some of you may be now wiping coffee off of your keyboards after reading the name of our little club. Let me clarify. My girlfriends and I are a little zany. And when we get together, we tend to eat, drink and be merry. (Ok, if I'm honest, we eat, drink, and be catty.) So we figured we should be up front and honest and let people know what they would be getting into. This certainly wasn't going to be your momma's book club, and we didn't want to offend anyone, so we figured the name could very well weed out any potential offendees.

Most of our friends seemed to be on board with the idea. We decided it would be pretty casual. Once a month, one of us would choose a book and host a dicussion at their home. The first book we read was "The Last Time I Was Me" by Cathy Lamb. I will tell you that those of us who actually read the book liked it. But I will also tell you that at this first discussion, there was much more booze and broads than books. I think the extent of our discussion went something like, "Oh yeah, I loved it, could you please pass the wine?" I really just think we were all so excited to be together again, and it had been so long since we had been, we were too busy catching up with gossip and free therapy that we just didn't have time to get around to book discussing. But we were off with a bang.

So the second book was "Charlie St Cloud" by Ben Sherwood. Truth be told, I don't really remember much about that discussion, except that not many people had actually read the entire thing, which annoyed me to no end. Actually, this annoys me every month, but it's something I'm just gonna have to get over, as many of my friends are much busier and less anal retentive than me....By the way, I enjoyed this book immensely, and am now avoiding seeing the movie, as rarely does a movie not tick me off once I've read the book.

The third month it was my turn to host. I was so excited. I decided I was going to force my friends to take a step back from our signature "chic lit" and step out of their comfort zones. I was going to make all of my friends face something that I had become recently passionate about. Politics. I chose "Obama Zombies" by Jason Mattera. I am pretty sure that they were all less than impressed. And while I don't think anyone but me read the book in its entirety, I will say, they all participated in what was probably our first in depth discussion ever. So for that, I thank them. I try really hard to not push my views on people, but the feminist in me really wants my female partners in crime to be informed about things other than lattes and shoes.

The next book was "The Lake Shore Limited" by Sue Miller. Again, almost no one read it in its entirety, and apparently no one really liked it. (I thought it was great, and I did think we had a fabulous discussion that night). Turns out, the books people don't really like or identify with, spur some pretty interesting conversations. Other than social interaction, this was one of the things that my friend and I had envisioned when we started this book club; to get people to step out of their comfort zones and read something they would never otherwise have picked up, to expand their horizons, maybe see things from a different point of view. I don't know about my fellow broads, but this is my absolute favorite thing about book club!

Next, we read a quirky little novel called "What Comes After Crazy" by Sandi Kahn Shelton. This book was full of zany, colorful characters, and really spurred some good discussion, mostly about which characters we could identify with and all the things they did wrong. (Us women are really good about figuring out how everyone else is screwing their life up, even though we can't seem to manage our own, so this book was fabulous for that!)

The following month, we kind of scrambled at the last minute for the hostess. When the hostess let me know the name of the book, and I posted it to our club's Facebook page, you could almost hear the collective groan. We would be reading "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. I think most of the gals felt a little uneasy about reading a fantasy book marketed towards young adults....which is why it was so surprising that this discussion had by far the largest turn out, and by golly, every single person there had read the book in its entirety! In fact, many of us had already moved on to the second book, and some had already finished the entire series.

This discussion was INSANE, mostly because we were all so excited that we were all taking at once. (It really was like a hen house in there). While Suzanne Collins' amazing writing skills can certainly be credited with this, a few margaritas at the shady little Mexican Restaurant down the street beforehand may have helped fuel the fire.

So now, we of course are reading the second book in the Trilogy, and will be discussing it next month at this awesome new little wine bar that just opened in town. I am so freakin excited, although I feel bad for the staff already. Our little book club has really taken off, so much so that it appears we are going to have to institute some ground rules so we can all actually hear each other from now on.

My point in all of this is even if the recession is getting you down, don't let it completely rob you of those social interactions that keep you sane. Start a book club, train for a marathon with some friends. Do something ! Keep your brain and your emotional and physical health intact, and you will be much more likely to come out of this recession with all your faculties unscathed.