LitClub: Random Readers
Littleton, Colorado
TUESDAYS WITH BOOK CLUB were tough for a couple of its members, so they finally decided to start up their own club— Random Readers.
I take it you don't meet on Tuesdays, right?
That would be right. We meet Friday nights
.
So how many members do you have?
We wanted to keep it small, so we each picked one or two friends. That was back in October, 2013, and now there are twelve of us—it's a good number for discussion.
Tell us what you've been reading lately.
Here's our most recent list:
♦ Still Life
♦ Turtles All the Way Down
♦ Little Fires Everywhere
♦ Delicious
♦ Year One
♦ We Were the Lucky Ones
♦ Sleeping in Eden
♦ Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
♦ Bring Me Back
♦ The Passenger
♦ Sourdough
♦ Snow Child
Any favorites?
Well, we actually vote on how we like a book, each of us assigning a rank from 1-5, with 5 being high.
Our top favorite is Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone.
What about books that led to particularly good discussions?
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivy: what a beautiful story! We couldn't decide if the Snow Child was real or not, and we had wonderful discussions trying to figure it out.
Any books that disappointed?
Year One by Nora Roberts: we felt it was a bit futuristic / sci fi. I think we all saw the romance Nora was trying to come through and struggled a bit with all the death.
Where do you hold your meetings?
We host in our home. We don't care about the dirty laundry or the dusting. It's something we all have in common!
How do you choose your books?
At the beginning of the year we create a rotation that includes all members. The hostess for that month gets to pick the book.
Do you have any rules?
Not really. Anything goes with the exception of self help books!
Any activities?
We try to coordinate the theme of the evening as much as possible to the book we are reading.
We have had several authors participate through a few different methods of communication. Below is a list of the authors we’ve had the pleasure of "meeting" with.
♦ Diane Chamberlain
The Silent Sister
(Skype) November 2014
♦ Jennifer McMahon
The Winter People
(Conference Call) September 2015
♦ Sarah Maine
Between the Tides
Via Email, Twitter Post) October 2016
♦ Sarah Jio
Violets of March
(Skype) July 2017
♦ Nicole Baart
Sleeping in Eden
(Skype) July 2018
♦ Hannah Mary McKinnon
The Neighbors
(Skype) May 2019
Do you do anything outside your regular meetings?
We send a birthday text to each of the members. We all chime in and send birthday wishes to the birthday girl throughout the day.
Overall, how would you describe your club?
We're a group of moms and friends who love to get together and talk about books! We have a very structured approach to ensure we talk about the book but definitely also allow for catching up on non book related topics!