I joined a book club!

Then started another one.

This summer, a dear friend of mine gathered a few of her friends and started a monthly book club. I’ve met three new wonderful women in the same season of life as me, chatted about two amazing books, and most recently read a 5-star magical realism book that I had never heard of: Midnight at the Blackbird Café by Heather Webber. I can’t wait until our meeting to chat about the blackbird pie. This book gave me Sarah Addison Allen vibes—SAA is fav author of mine—and I’m hitting Webber’s backlist in future. I read a ton of books every year but this club is going to get me to read new/different things and I’m so excited.

Being an introvert, it’s important to have intentional outings and connections with people. We don’t actually want to be alone all the time; we just don’t want to be out in huge crowds making small talk either! I have been trying to reach out to friends more and attend author book tour events to stretch my bookish tendencies into socialization. With that new priority in mind…

Midsummer, someone posted in our neighborhood Facebook group that they had just moved in and were looking for playdates for their kiddos, book clubs for them, etc. A whole bunch of people commented that they would love to join a neighborhood book club. As I read the comments, silently musing about the possibility of starting one, a friend in the neighborhood messaged me that they would help me kick it off. Whelp, why not? I had never been a book club person in my entire life, but I had joined a tiny one a month ago, so of course I could now lead one with a friend. Ha! We bounced ideas off each other and when I posted about officially starting a new club, we got a lot of interest. A dozen people came to the kickoff meeting and some others emailed that they wanted the scoop so they could join in next time. It was so fun meeting new bookish people! Some are avid readers like me, some are trying to get back into reading and a club with deadlines would help, and others just want to meet people and try a new hobby. We had a wide ranges of ages in attendance, which makes it even better as we’ll have a variety of perspectives on these books.

I’m looking forward to spending time with new-to-me books and new bookish friends!