Book Club #2

Summary of first Book Club meeting:  Awesome.

We all ready Hunger Games and had an incredible conversation. I made bread, Erin brought goat cheese, and we all drank wine while discussing the (arguably) imperfect story line.

Summary of second Book Club meeting:  also awesome.

We decided on a number of pivotal things in our second meeting. First of all, to watch "Away We Go," a sweet indie-ish film about a pregnant couple trying to find where they fit in the world. It talks a lot about family, expectations, and home... all really good topics that we never got around to discussing.  We ate chinese take out and caught up on all of our busy weeks.

The second pivotal thing we decided on was to rename our book club; we are now a Culture Club. Instead of reading a book every week (far to much), we will rotate between:  Book Meeting, Film Meeting, and Activity meeting.  Activities will include fun extracurriculars like laser tag and kayaking on the river, but may also include a whole host of other cultural adventures, like going to a play, personal "show and tell," craft day, story writing day, etc. The books, films, and activities don't have to relate to each other, but can. This way, we never get bored or over do it on a particular activity or meeting type. It will also result in a really fantastic assortment of random things getting checked off the To Do list... all those If-Only-I-Weren't-An-Adult things we all still wish for... like swimming in a giant ball pit or having icecream for dinner.

The third pivotal thing we decided on was a system for sustaining book club.  How do we pick the next book? It was a great point of stress and conflict.  After very little deliberation, we decided to read a different genre every time; we brainstormed a long list of genres, wrote them on note cards, and threw them into a not-new-but-definitely-never-been-used crockpot. Each Book meeting, we would select a new genre from the crockpot. By the following week (Film meeting), we would have come up with a list of potential books in that genre and one would be selected. We would then have two weeks before the next Book Meeting.
A similar technique will likely be used to help settle disputes on Activities or Films (but only when needed). It's adds a really nice sense of suspense.

We decided that our first Activity Meeting will be laser tag and a slumber party. Our next book is Life, the memoir by Keith Richards.