by Anna Wright

Created on: September 11, 2008

The Pleasure of Having a Book Group

It all started about 2 years ago when one of my friends mentioned finding a book group for us to join. We kind of both just laughed it off and that was that. After her saying it again months later I got to thinking about it. This was something I had not thought about doing before but with her voice in the back of my head I started to think about it more and more. Somehow, and I'm still not quite sure how, I got to thinking about starting a book group myself. Yes, you read that correctly, instead of finding a group to join I was thinking about starting a group on my own. Why not? After poking around at various websites about book groups I put out some feelers and a few e-mails to see if there were others that would be interested in the idea. After I got a group of 6 women who would commit to the idea we picked a date, a time, a place and then what sometimes is the hardest to choose a book. With that we were off and running. That was about a year and a half ago and we are all still happy to be part of this group.

Let me tell you a bit about us. We are 6 women of varying ages at various stages of our lives with occupations ranging from stay-at-home mother to a health care worker to a computer techie. We all have children ranging from a 3-year-old boy to a high school senior. Some of us have only 1 child and others have several. Just a group of women coming together for some simple good-hearted girl time. Time to chitchat. Time to share and care. Time to catch up with each other's lives. And of course, time to discuss what brought us together in the first place, the book and the many tangents it may take us on. There is nothing fancy about us. It is a completely relaxed environment where everyone feels comfortable to share. There is a great deal of respect for each other and our different viewpoints. There is absolutely no judging going on here. No pressure, no stress. No crying children with their many wants, same goes for the hubbies. We leave that all at home for a couple of hours once a month. All that is required is that you show up. You're welcome here even if you didn't get to read the book, however that is extremely rare. No serious rules other than the unspoken rule of always having some kind of chocolate.

You might be wondering what kind of books we discuss. One of the beauties of this group is that we discuss lots of different types that are suggested by one of us. We read books that we probably would not have on our

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