Musings on the value of book clubs

Last night Scott and I saw some people we haven’t seen in real life in several years but who we correspond with annually via Christmas cards. One gentleman said he really enjoyed keeping up with us each year through our letter and thanked us for doing it. Then he asked me what was new with the book club. I was stopped in my tracks and really took a minute to recover. First I wondered, do I talk about it every year in our letter? If so, what do I say? Then I thought for a minute about all the things he could have asked me about in my life and he chose that? I gathered my thoughts and told him what we were reading this month and we talked books for a minute and then went on.

But I haven’t been able to get that conversation out of my mind. I’m curious about what prompted the question. Did he wish he had someone to talk books with every month? Did he wish guys could do that because it seems a mostly girl thing?

So then it got me thinking about my long-standing book club. We are a group of women who met through our volunteer efforts to help kids in Utah. We were all engaged in child advocacy efforts, were drawn to each other and had already become close friends. One of the ladies had read “The Book Thief” and wanted to talk to somebody about it. We were all avid readers so she asked us all to read it and we had our first meeting in February 2009 over lunch at the State Capitol during the legislative session. We had so much fun we decided to be a book club. So we made some rules and started up.

Since then, members have left and members have been added, rules have changed, and traditions have begun. We have had deep and penetrating book discussions. We live in Utah, Salt Lake, and Davis counties so we are not neighbors and over the years most of us have ended our advocacy work so we really only see each other once a month. But that core group of ladies is still there. I think about all we’ve been through together and it’s been a lot. Together we have weathered returning to college, returning to work, family deaths, marriages of kids, births of grandchildren, high school graduations, college graduations, sending our kids on LDS missions, milestone birthdays, accidents, surgeries, and just about everything life can throw at you. When I have a crisis, they are the first ones I call or email. They pray for me, they volunteer to help me, they cry with me, and they tell me how much they love me. How grateful I am for them.

They are my kindred spirits.