Book Club

A few years ago, I joined a book club.


Please don't think that I am one of those beret wearing, deep and tortured, intellectual types that slink around galleries and boast at dinner parties that I'm part of an exclusive book club - very high brow. Not at all.

 It was a chat around the water cooler at work type scenario where my friend said something like "Hey, I think I might start a book club - what do you think?" Great idea, I told her and... voila... a book club was formed!


Our book club consists of about 25 members (there have been a lot more over the years but this seems to be the total of loyal attendees and virtual* members). Generally, about 6-9 members regularly turn up to almost every book club.

It's an interesting mix of ladies - who all know each other by '6 degrees of seperation' type associations (think Ferris Bueller's Day Off: - "..my best friend's sister's boyfriend, brother's girlfriend heard from this guy, who knows this girl, who.... [invited me to join book club]"). We even have international membership and have had virtual* contributions received via email from keen members who can't attend in person but still want to talk about the book or make a recommendation.


The first rule of book club: you do not talk about book club...no sorry..that's not it... We only have one rule.... and that is - a book club book can never be a book that someone has already read. It doesn't matter if only one member has read it, it has to be an original recommendation.


There are other 'rules' or trends that have developed, which we don't enforce:-

• for some reason, there has only ever been women in our book club (although from time to time we hear reports that some husbands will ask what goes on at book club - I suppose they would like us to tell them that we engage in pillow fights and braid each other's hair and the like) 
• we generally meet monthly
• we meet for breakfast** (at one stage we joked about changing our name to 'the breakfast club' because for a few meetings in a row, none of us had read the books and we would just spend the entire time gushing over how delicious the breakfast/coffee was and engage in general chatter).

**On occasion we have met for dinner - in fact, the next book club is a dinner event for a number of reasons. Firstly, because we will be farewelling one of our most loyal members before she embarks on an overseas adventure and secondly because we are going to a local book cafe for a 'book chat' where they talk us through a stack of recently released novels and make (fantastic) recommendations.The last time we went to a book chat we came away with a massive list of recommendations which came in handy as a 'go to' list when no one could come up with any recommendations.

So why am I telling you all this? Well... I am inviting you to 'virtually join' our book club if you like. I'll post the current book club recommendations monthly for those that are interested and on the rare occasion that I actually read a book, I may even give you a run down on what I think. I would love to hear what you think about any of our book club books too.


The current book club book is The Secret Life of Dresses which is the debut novel by a fellow blogger,  Erin McKean. Erin is a lexicographer (I had to look this word up and ironically it means "One who writes, compiles, or edits a dictionary") and so appropriately is co-founder of online dictionary Wordnik. She is also an avid sewer and a collector of vintage clothes.

The story follows Dora, a funny but reserved uni student who was raised by her grandmother Mimi who owns a vintage dress shop. The book begins with Dora racing to be by Mimi’s side when tragedy strikes and she has to step in and run the shop. It’s not until a customer asks Dora if her dress has a story that she discovers Mimi has been creating lives for certain dresses. The dresses speak in the first person and only ever see and hear what happens when they’re being worn. Some have been worn lots, others only once and then placed back in the wardrobe never to be worn again for the memories they hold.


Dora, much to Mimi’s annoyance has no care for fashion or the frocks that Mimi has been saving for her. But when she arrives back home and has nothing to wear, Dora has no choice but to put on the very dresses Mimi put aside in a special wardrobe for Dora, matching underwear and shoes to boot. It is then, that she starts to question everything.


While we're talking about books, I'll let you know of a great website I found -  The Book Depository . The books are cheap and its free shipping (yes, even to Australia) although they can take as long as a month to arrive and even if you buy a heap of books together in one transaction, they can arrive separately...over a few weeks.

I should also point out that I am actually a prolific book club member...well not really...I'm a member of at least one other book club, this one is very exclusive and I am a much better 'behaved' member - I actually read at least 3 books a night, sometimes as many as 10 .... Yes.... Amelie (Daddy) and I have our own book club. 


 A post will follow with Amelie's first book club recommendation and a short review...