All posts tagged: book club

Top Flirting Ideas When You Have Glasses & Other Book-Inspired Lists

Rumnique’s diaries. (Photo credit: Rumnique Nannar) Making lists had always had a calming effect on me during my chaotic teenage years, whether it was recounting the “Top 5 Moments Taylor Looked at Me Today” or “Sexy Books to Hide from Mum.” Back then, there was an unbridled intensity when I chanced upon an amazing book that moved me — it had to be dissected in list form for its best and worst qualities in my diaries. It has been rather hilarious to look back at my old notebooks, filled with scented pen doodles and handwritten lists of books that struck a chord in that boy-crazy teenager. At the back of every notebook, there was an ongoing and redrafted list of what made up my dream boyfriend. He was a composite of all the right traits: the bluntness of Mr. Darcy, the luscious hair of Robert from The Princess Diaries, the musical talents of Robbie from the Georgia Nicholson series and the broodiness of a Mr. Rochester. In short, your average entitled rock god. As I …

The Life and Death of Book Club Attempts

By Marinka

I have been in my current book group for almost eight years, and although I love the books and the company of smart women, what I value most about it is that it did not disband as soon as I joined. Like the other two book groups did. Really, it was enough to give this reading woman a complex. I joined my first book group several months after I graduated from college because I believed that’s what people who graduated from college did, along with living in too-small, overpriced apartments and bemoaning “adulthood.” A woman I met in a writing class at the local Y invited me, and I found myself surrounded by 40-something goddesses who were smart and well-spoken and had read more books than I’d seen in my life. I liked all the women in the group, unusual for a misanthrope like me, and they seemed to like me. All of the women were married (or divorced!), and some had children. Several women belonged to another book group, in addition to ours, although …

10 Books That Have Defined My Life (So Far)

By Bethanne Patrick

(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight.com) I’ve been taking a break from my own book club this year because I’ve been working on a book — about other people’s favorite books (more on that soon, but it will be out next spring from Regan Arts). So although almost any of you reading this piece would probably be able to put together your own life-in-books article, I feel I’m peculiarly suited to the task as an avid reader who eventually found a way to construct an entire professional life around books, authors and literacy. Here, I’m offering 10 books that not only touched me during the life stages in which I read them but also perfectly illustrate those stages — not just for me, but also for you, I hope. After all, we’re in this together. A very big book club indeed. CHILDHOOD The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf Ferdinand is a great big strong bull who would really prefer to pass his days in a sunny meadow among the flowers. Woven into the words and pictures …

I Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks – And It Changed My Life

By Sloane Davidson

Sloane with two new books! (Photo courtesy of Sloane Davidson/@Sloane) What happens when you wake up one day and realize you don’t remember the last book you read? That was me. This isn’t a tragic tale, but it is a story about a little girl who loved to read and grew up losing herself in books and writing in margins and dog-earing favorite passages and then, slowly over time, stopped. And it’s probably one that sounds familiar to you, too. Growing up, I had books that changed my life and shook my foundation with how they were written. Books like The Alchemist, Zorba The Greek, The Fountainhead, and All The King’s Men. I read my fair share of beach reads and quick summer novels too, but it was the life-changing books that made me feel like my inner Wonder Woman was on the rise. I would get lost in words and stories, and it made me feel less nervous about my own future. In my teens and 20s, the future was this audacious and infinite …

My 6 Favorite Travelogues

By Courtney Colwell

“Often I feel I got to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I am.” – Michael Crichton This quote is from a book that probably doesn’t enter many people’s list of favorite travelogues, but it tops mine. The book aptly named Travels, was written by Crichton in 1988, nearly 20 years after Andromedia Strain and two before Jurassic Park. It would be another 10 years before I had heard of or read Travels. By that time, Crichton was a household name. Still, I hadn’t read any of his books until a friend of mine suggested Travels. We were sitting on the beach in Koh Samui, Thailand; he was reading it and intermittently laughing out loud. A book about travel, written by an author known for sci-fi, is funny? I was intrigued. I’ve since read and re-read the book and currently own my third copy. I’ve often recommended and too-often loaned it and never seen it again, hence the need for new copies. What I love about Travels is not just …

Margit’s Note: The First Rule of Book Club…

By Margit Detweiler

(Illustration: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight.com) At least skim the book. 2nd rule of book club: Drink copious amounts of wine. 3rd rule of book club: Try not to disband after a few months. I’d bet that each one of us has attempted, loved and probably struggled with a book club at some point in our lives. Getting together with good or new friends to read and discuss a book sounds delightful in theory — and sometimes it is. And sometimes it’s a failure of messy schedules and pressure to get to the last page in time. But we try it because we love LOVE to read a good book, we want to absorb it, share our joy (or pain) and live inside its pages while we can. Right now I’m slowly tag-teaming two books — the surprisingly subversive Dietland by Sarai Walker and the graphic novel (easy reading!) prequel to Fun Home, Are You My Mother by Allison Bechdel — and, yet, not spending nearly enough time reading books. Somehow buzzy Facebook-shared articles, zombie television, time-passing games (a …