Book Club !
Zoom is great. It got us through “lock down” during the deepest part of the pandemic.
And I still use it and am SO happy for it with regards to my 3 besties that come together from 3 different cities to chat almost every week.
But I am soooo tired of it when it comes to missing out on seeing my book club friends in person. One of our book club members has joined us from the States and I had actually never met her in person.
And one member doesn’t have dial up and we never see her face on Zoom.
So it was just the best to finally get together the other night for our first in person book club meeting since the start of the pandemic.
I started my book club experience when I lived in Calgary over twenty years ago. We would meet once a month at a different member’s home every time and a different member would be in charge of reviewing the book/author/theme, etc., to lead the discussion.
I think at our largest there were 14 of us. The host would provide drinks , food, and snacks, and the club meeting would start around 7:30 p.m. and sometimes go till 11 pm. The discussions were amazing and I learned to enjoy books that I might otherwise not have been attracted to in the store. We heard that other ‘chapters’ in our neighbourhood used to tease that we were more about the wine than the books…ha ha. (Not true!)
Below :
These are the ladies from my very first book club. ( Chapter three, there were I think up to six ‘chapters’ in our neighbourhood.)
A) 1991, the girls join me on stage after I performed in “10 Little Indians” at the Pleiades Theatre. Check out my ‘fro’ top left.
B) The girls at a meeting in March, 2022
C) Today , 33 years as a club and friends.
Funny story:
I was canvassing for the Heart Fund one evening shortly after our move to Edmonton and when a woman opened the door and I heard a whole bunch of women laughing… I joked, “ Is that a book club in there?” She replied, “Yes, it is.” When I asked her what she was reading and I told her I had actually read that book , she asked me a poignant question: “Do you drink wine?” When I answered in the affirmative she called out to her friends,“LADIES, WE HAVE A NEW MEMBER FOR OUR BOOK CLUB…” she called me in, and the rest is history. (I had to complete my canvassing the next night…ha ha)
The beautiful women above are the ones who could make our first ‘face to face’ meeting the other night. A couple of the other ladies had to unfortunately miss for personal reasons but it was a joy to even have our small club in person at lovely Louise’s (top left on right). It was SO cool to finally meet Julie for the first time in person ( red sweater), and it was also a delightful dinner meeting!
Lou provided delicious ‘fixins’ to make homemade donairs….my first time…and they were delicious and healthy too! I brought my homemade blueberry banana bread, Julie brought fruit, Wendy shared tzatziki and chips with us , and Jackie brought Japanese cabbage salad. All yummy.
Our book for the evening was “The Fountains of Silence” by Ruta Sepetys and we all thoroughly enjoyed this one.
It’s actually fun when we don’t all agree on how well done the book was because it can make for a great, heated discussion.
Do you like reading? Join the club!
What’s happens in Book Club stays in Book Club…ha ha.