We had our book club Christmas party last night, at my house. Pot luck festive stuff.We voted for the book folks had enjoyed most this year, and Angela's Ashes emerged winner. Everyone had brought a book as a gift and stuck it under the Christmas tree (real one - from IKEA!) and then we drew for who got which book. I gave Theft, got Jude the Obscure which I've already read three times, so gave that away too! There were one or two pretty strange choices though ...
It's been a good year. The group is thriving, probably up to maximum numbers (we regularly get 15 people at meetings, though the membership is much higher), and this year we've read 11 books and enjoyed - if not the books themselves - then the chance to vent about them!
Our most recent reads were The Inheritance of Loss, which evoked very mixed feelings (half the group enjoyed it, a quarter thought it was "okayish", and the rest hated it vehemently and were disturbingly vociferous!) and Tourism which everyone really enjoyed. (I thought it would shock some, but not at all.)
If reading about a book club makes you green as a Christmas tree with envy, why not set one up? A few friends, a few books, and that's more or less all you need for ongoing entertainment throughout the year.
14 comments:
Inheritance of Loss was AWFUL :-)
krishna agrees with you as do a couple of the others. ... me, i liked it and no matter how often you say you hated it i won't budge.
we had an office year end tea party of sort last week. We exchange gifts. The rule is it should be RM10 worth minimum( what a cheat cheapskate co!). I gave away 'the paper house by carlos maris dominguez and 'Curry' the biography (bought from the atria sales ). An OP who never reads got my present (not many people read here anyway) and i got two mugs full of chocolates which was quite ok...some others just got a picture frame!
But I have a few mugs already in my office room, one of them was this one i bought from one of those sex shops in manila, it has a penis for the handle.
a few guys were offended ( strangely not ladies) so i just tied the head with a rubber band and said ok now no fear, it is safe. It has got a rubber on it.
*lol* greenbottle.
you might make a convert with the books. or the books might get passed on and passed on again by fate to end up in the hands of a happy reader.
wow so fun! what a great idea. unfortunately i seem to be the only readaholic in my circle of friends. sad case. i offer my library for friends to borrow but none are interested. sigh....
say, how's the editing going?
hi yvonne - i'm kicking myself for missing your launch the other day. really so sorry - i clean forgot the date. have started on your proofreading but at the moment have several editors chasing me for things i haven't written. do you have a deadline?
if you want to form a book club then advertise for some new friends on your blog. invite them over for a chat. decide on a book and get started. easy-peasy. that way you'd make some new friends.
Hey Sharon, at least you weren't recipient of a "strange choice". I hate to say this but let's lay some groundrules for next year.
yes we do need to do that. else it is so sad, to make a gift of a thoughtfully chosen novel and to receive a yellowed and dog-eared copy of a book that someone has has lying on their shelves for god-knows how many years and which is pretty unreadable. i felt very sorry for you, animah. i thought it was fine for folks to go and buy a warehouse sale book if it is a novel they themselves have loved - but the one you got was really the booby prize!
I hope the giver reads this and understands that joining a bookclub is not a free ride.
Sharon/Animah, I was under the impression that we would make a gift of a book that meant something to us(either in the form of a tale that captivated or a writer with an interesing style) in the hope that the recipient would discover and perhaps hopefully share the same pleasure we did at reading it. So a "thoughtfully chosen novel" can just as easily come from one's own dusty bookshelf as the pristine confines of MPH or Times.I confess my copies were dog-eared(although by no means unreadable) from having been well-thumbed. In my case, I selected an interesting writer(my opinion,of course) who's stopped writing and whose books aren't easily available anymore.Of course if the book comes with torn pages and illegible squiggles then the giver should exercise some judgement.So I agree we should lay the ground rules next year.And for the record, Animah did NOT get my book which is just as well, given it's condition and our obviously disparate choices in reading material:-)
KayKay,
I would have known that a book from you would have been carefully selected. I don't even mind illegible squiggles if the book is precious. I know that a lot of us selected our books after much thought (given the wide diversity of the group) and enjoyed the process of buying and wrapping them.
I don't mean to sound like sour grapes but I'm glad no one else recieved that book - it would have been disheartening for them, especially for our newer members.
i woulda cried. as it was i loved the book i drew but had read it so could pass the joy on.
Hi Sharon,
This is my library thing: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/drachen262
And this is my blog: http://richhuang.blogspot.com
Do you think I can fit into any book club? :-)
Richard
OOPS! I just realised that I've commented in a topic that is 2 years old! Sorry!
Richard
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