Ever since I read that Nicholas Sparks “[doesn't] write romance novels” and Danielle Steele’s books, according to her, “…[are] not really about romance“, I thought they should get married. And make babies.

Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?! Then they could raise a delusional human being into thinking that, oh, I don’t know, they don’t read romance novels…and of course their mom and dad don’t write the damned things.

So then I was thinking about what that baby might look like. Or who it might be.

::blink::

::blink::

MAYBE THEY ALREADY HAVE A LOVE CHILD!

ACK!

I think this person already exists. Behold:

Can’t you just see her defending her parents, Nick and Dani? “Your dumb. They don’t write romance. It’s all about real life. It’s deep.”

Excuse me. I think I just puked in my mouth.

This week I’m really excited to interview Sheila from Book Journey about her book club of almost 10 years! I met Sheila this year at BEA and instantly connected with her. Enjoy this peek into her book club!

How long has your book club been in existence?

We started in August of 2001

Does your book club have a name?

The Bookies

How many people are in your book club?

17

Is your book club open to new members? How do new members end up in your book club?

For the first time in January we put a freeze on members, we were just getting too big and limiting ourselves as to where to meet.

When do you meet? Is it a set day every month, or do you work it out so it’s on a different day but convenient for everyone?

Second Tuesdays of every month

What kind of books do you read?

Because we are so large we try to stick to newer releases so we can all find copies easy.  We read a mix of genres.  Every October we read a Classic.

How do you choose books?

We vote.  Each member is allowed to bring one suggestion.  They nominate it, share what it is about, and then we all go around and each get two votes.  (No idea why we stick to two votes each but we have always done it that way since we were a small group of 5 so that’s what we do

Which book generated the best discussion?

Over the years we have had some good ones.  We need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver brought out emotions I didn’t know our book club members had.  We were all over the place on how we felt about that one.  Summer house by Jude Deveroux is particularly memorable because we had a wonderful discussion on the road not traveled and I think we all cried during that meeting.

Do you invite authors to join your discussion when you discuss their book? How do you handle having the author in on your discussion if some or all of the members didn’t absolutely love the book?

Not as often as I would like.  We take turns choosing where we will meet and sometimes the area we are meeting in is hard to accommodate a phone conversation, although I would love to do more of that.

Do you have one person who moderates the discussion?

I usually create the discussion questions and keep us moving.

Have you ever had a professional moderator moderate one of your meetings?

No, but that sounds cool.

How long does the discussion last?

We always do dinner with out meetings so we are usually done with dinner, book discussion, and chatting in 2 hours.

Do you eat food at your book club meeting?

We do. If we meet at a restaurant we order there, or if we meet in a member’s home we potluck and try to theme our food to the book.

How do you decide where the meeting will be held?

We hand out a schedule at the beginning of each year and someone different is responsible to choose a place each month.

Is there anything else about your book club you’d like to share?

Being such a large group we do events to keep things exciting.  Every July we have our Queen Event (you can see that on my blog – we just had that in July) where we dress up in formal wear and do speeches or rhymes, songs or whatever, on why we should be Queen.  It is a lot of fun – everyone participates and we vote in a Queen for a year.  The Queen breaks all ties on book votes and chooses our next meeting place if the member who is supposed to choose is not present.  It’s all in fun and builds great community.  This event came out of the book Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King.

If a book we read becomes a movie we try to organize going together.

In December we have a Christmas party, do a gift exchange and potluck at one fo the members homes.  We try to read a Holiday type book as well.

Thanks for sharing, Sheila! Your book club sounds like a blast!

Previous interviews:

Leslie, my friend from high school
Ti from Book Chatter and her Valencia Library Book Group
Michelle
Kelly from Yannabe and her OPRA Book Club
Heather from A Lifetime of Books and her book club Storie delle Sorrelle
Helen from Helen’s Book Blog and her TWO book clubs
Elisabeth from The Lit Chicks

Sometime around April 20, 2011, there will be a little Hey Baby.

(Doesn’t that look like a gummy bear? Nomnomnom…)

I’m now out of my first trimester. It’s been so hard to keep it a secret for so long! Perhaps that’s why you haven’t seen many posts lately…I knew I couldn’t keep my mouth shut!

Everyone seems to have the same questions, so here’s some answers…

Will you find out the gender? Yes! My husband would rather not, but I don’t think I want to do that the first time around. I’m working two jobs and would rather be as prepared as possible. Perhaps if I didn’t have as much on my plate I could be more carefree about it.

Have you had any morning sickness? Nothing I can complain about. I’ve had a little, but I never did throw up. Mostly I just had food aversions. For about a month or 6 weeks I only wanted donuts and ice cream. I fought that as best I could, I swear!

Is your family excited? Yes! I’m so so lucky to have an awesome mother-in-law who probably couldn’t be more excited if it was her own child. And before you look at me sideways about the whole MIL thing, let me tell you that she’s got the best boundaries of anyone I know. In the two years Dave and I have been married, she never once asked if and when we’d try to get pregnant. I even told someone else, right in front of her, that we were trying, and she never asked about it. My dad’s pretty stoked since this will be his first grandchild! I know my grandmother is happy because the last time I mentioned we’d be trying for kids soon, she said, Well, you better hurry up! (she’s 93, and I want her to see her first great grandchild, but realistically she was saying to hurry since she might not be around much longer. LOL)

Have you started talking about names? Yes, but the problem is we’ve got good ideas for girls names but no ideas for boys names. It’s really important to me to give a nod to relatives who’ve come before us. My grandmother’s name is Verna, her husband’s name was Vernon…see the dilemma?

If you have more questions, ask away and I’ll answer them all! Not sure if I’ll answer them in the comments or by modifying the post…will have to think on that.

Oh, and before I go, I want to mention some other bloggers who I consider friends (or consider myself to be their blog stalker) who are pregnant as well:

• Liz from Mabel’s House
• Wendy from Musings of a Bookish Kitty
• Tanya from mamatots (I met Tanya on a forum for women due during April 2011, and we’ve got so much in common that I took an instant liking to her!)
• Nicole at Making it Lovely (she’s not really my friend, but I like her blog)
• And some other people who I’m not sure want to be called out. If this is you, let me know and I’ll add you in!

31 Hours by Masha Hamilton explores the far reaching effects of one young man’s choice to blow himself up in a NY subway. The book explores the interconnectedness of folks before this young man, Jonas, follows through with his decision.

31 Hours was chosen for my book club, and most everyone enjoyed this book more than me. I felt like the book took folks who were connected in some way to Jonas, but never connected them to each other. Because 31 Hours was trying to explore so many relationships, it failed to fully explore Jonas, his childhood, his family, etc. Sure, it touched on those things.

He’d been such an empathetic child, feeling everything from Carol’s pain at the breakup to the loss of a belly-up goldfish that had to be flushed.

So of course, with all this sensitivity, when he reached adolescence, he began questioning. He went through periods of doubting the values of everyone around him, from the principal of his school to the director of this theater group to the artists Jake [Jonas' dad] represented, and finally to her, his mom. And she was fine with that. She could stand up to a bit of close examination, she told herself; she wasn’t that bad. Besides, how much worse if she’d raised a little Republican who bought into it all without any reservations?

Okay, yes, the author has TOLD me that Jonas was sensitive and questioning, but she never SHOWS me. The author is so busy TELLING me how the story plays out, that she forgets to show me how the story plays out.

I am ALL ABOUT random connections. But I really feel like at least two connections could have been left out of the story and nothing would have been lost. 31 Hours was short, and I would have loved to have had the story more fleshed out in order to really delve into WHY this happened.

Rating: 60 out of 100

Masha Hamilton’s website

Other reviews:

I’m Booking It (loved it)

Booking Mama (loved it)

She Is Too Fond of Books (loved it)

S. Krishna’s Books (loved it)

Linus’s Blanket (loved it)

Bermudaonion’s Weblog (loved it)

Care’s Online Book Club (loved it)

Beth Fish Reads (liked it more than me, less than others)