and have great discussions about what we've read.
--Dara Langlotz, Book Club founder
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who loved to read...
Another reason I thought of starting a book club was the lack of a place in my life to get to know non-Christians on a deeper level. I also was tired of hearing the opinion that Christians were narrow-minded people who don't understand culture. Beginning the club was partially my response to that.
The book club is called simply 'Book Club' by its members mostly because I am not too creative with names, but also because I didn't want to give it a name that it would outgrow or which would become outdated.*
From the start I wanted the book club to be something that fit easily into people's schedules. Allowing 6 to 8 weeks between meetings would be less intense than meeting every month. It also made sense to share the responsibility of picking the books and leading the discussions so that a good variety of literature was covered and no one had the responsibility of planning the meeting each time.
Of dining and discussions
The dinners are the heart of the book club. From the beginning I wanted the 'DNA' of the book club to include excellent food and a warm, welcoming atmosphere. It was both fun and efficient to allow people to participate even more by bringing wine, hors d'oeuvres, side dishes, and desert. We also had small gifts for various quizzes based on the selected book and for things like 'oldest copy of the book' or 'first to finish reading the book.'I wanted the discussions to be a time when everyone could feel comfortable contributing and sharing their thoughts on the book. We soon found that often the more we as a group disliked a book the more interesting the discussion could become. From the beginning there was at least one person at each dinner who had either not finished or maybe not even started the selected book. This also proved to work well with our format. They often were interested enough in the club to read the next book, and many times they had some interesting insight to share with the rest of the club at the end based on just listening to our discussion. It was always interesting to me to see how people's opinions of a book could change or not change based on the discussion.
And they read happily ever after
Most of all I love the book club. It has become better than I could have hoped. I passed on the leadership/coordinator role and what felt like my 'baby' to Andrea Rooks in June of 2002 when my life became busy with other things. I have watched the club blossom under her leadership. She has added so much. It is because of her creativity and dedication that the book club has not grown stale. I perhaps provided the basic DNA of the book club, but she has added some very attractive 'features' that I never could have pulled off.The book club is a success; it is a great opportunity for those of us who like to keep our noses in books to get together and have great discussions about what we've read. The more diverse the personalities and backgrounds of the members of the book club the greater the discussions we have.
The point of the book club is not that we always like what we read, but rather that we are able have the chance to talk about what we read while getting to know each other better.
--Dara Langlotz, July 2003
*The book club eventually got the name "SLO Readers" when I began moving toward creating a web site and a web identity. No one really calls it SLO Readers, it remains simply "the book club." --Andrea Rooks