Thursday, July 22, 2010

Book Clubbers Welcome

Book clubs are wonderful. It is absolutely amazing to discuss a book with another person and get a totally different insight of the author's message. Of course, it is also comforting to find someone shares your excitement or who appreciates a certain passage beckoning you to take a trip down memory lane. How satisfying to recognize in someone else the anger the author made you experience! It is even redeeming to learn someone else thought a particular title was a total waste of time!

Another great benefit of being in a book club is discovering other books to read. Members are always sharing their latest find and advising one another if a certain title should be read before another one by the same author.

If you've never been part of a book club, you really should give it a try. In most cases, each member reads (or listens to) the same book and the facilitator prepares questions for discussion. I've yet to attend a meeting where we didn't get off-track from the book, but that's part of the fun too.

Socastee Library has several book clubs from which to choose. Each one is hosted by a library staff member. The most popular one is the one devoted to mysteries. Mysterious Mondays meets the second Monday each month at 6:00 in the evening. Last year, each monthly reading selection was set in a different country - and not a single one was written by James Patterson!

If the Book Fits Book Club is Socastee Library's eclectic reading group. Each month's selection is chosen completely without being limited to a certain genre and over the years a wide variety of books have been shared - from Pat Conroy's cookbook to the historical novel The Red Tent. The meetings are held the fourth Thursday at 6:00 p.m.

There is one Socastee book club which meets in the afternoon. It is devoted to southern fiction, but not limited to southerners. Recent reads have included The Prince of Tides, Ya-Yas in Bloom, and Sweetwater Creek. The meetings are held the third Wednesday each month at 1:30.

For each of these book clubs, the library staff stockpiles all the county library system's copies of the titles which are then made available for book club members to check out. At times we also borrowed books from Chapin Memorial Library as well as libraries around the country to provide enough copies for all interested persons.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention.......book clubs always have food! Refreshments and coffee just go hand-in-hand with a good read. Like the commercial said - "Try it, you'll like it!"

The FroggyOne @ Socastee

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