If you were to ask my husband what’s something that brings me great joy, I would guess he’d say my involvement in book clubs over the years.
Just moments ago, I got off a Zoom call with my online book club. We are a small and laid-back group; the connections are strong. We’re going through a book with a chapter for each month of the year. That’s a long commitment for one book, but with only two more meetings remaining, I’m feeling the feels of the preciousness of this group.
While living in Alaska and homeschooling our kids, I was part of a nine-year book club. Yo, I didn’t get out much, so book club night was something I looked forward to. We’d stay up late, talking, laughing, and crying, as ladies often do.
Our goal was not to get through the book (which we did), but get the book through us. What good is a book if it doesn’t impact your life in some way? Conversation initiated from a character or an event and bled over to our personal lives: how we think about life… how we parent… goals for our future… dreams for our children’s futures.
Now my two sons are college age. Though they are required to read a ton for school, they still manage to squeeze in a little time to read something not assigned to them. I taught them both to read and it thrills me to hear them talk about the books that are impacting them now.
When they were young and homeschooling, books were a big part of their lives. We hosted a couple book clubs with other children. One of my great joys was finding my kids’ books in the oddest of places: in the sheets of their beds, by the bathtub, in the kitchen, in the garage, on the back porch, nestled under a tree in the backyard. Music for this mama’s soul.
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” My good friend Marcus Tullius Cicero said that. He and I are both January babies. He was born some 2000+ years before me, but still we’re friends. I guess you could say I decorate rooms with books (or leave them laying around), and in a recent remodel of our home, I asked for a wall of library-ness. I love it so much, but it’s still not big enough to house all the boxes of books remaining in our storage unit.
My favorite shelf in our home library is the one that displays the many books our book club shared in nine years. Sometimes I just stand and look at all the titles. My mind rushes back to conversations, laughs and tears with my other mom ladies. How rich.
This next phase of my life, when our children are no longer children but grown men, it feels all the more important to keep this book club thing going. As my other good friend Mark Twain has said, “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”
So I will keep reading, and reading with friends – either in person, or in an online format. Perhaps you can join me sometime.
What about you?
Do you make regular time to read? What are your favorites? What books have impacted you?
