As much as I love book clubs, you’d probably think I would have joined one of the ones at our local library years ago. But as much as I love traditional book clubs (where you pick and read the same book together), I already have those in my life. So while I was still tempted, I knew that picking one more group with quasi-assigned reading wasn’t really what I wanted.
Enter the Rise and Shine Book Club.
Once a month, this group meets to talk about books. The difference is that there is no one book that we’re reading. We discuss a different genre every month (this month was horror, of course), and the library staff member who leads it gives recommendations in that genre. The rest of us are welcome to recommend books as well, and we all go home with a new list of things to add to the TBR list.
As an added bonus, when we attend in person, we get to take some of the advance reader copies that the library receives to review with us. The stack above is my haul from just two months of in-person meetings. I do love free books.
This book club is how I discovered Hollow Kingdom and the reason I picked up You this month. We’re discussing magical realism next month, and I can’t wait to discover more new treasures.
If you want to start a book club but don’t want the pressure of choosing one book that everyone will read or don’t think your bookish friends will want to add one more responsibility to their monthly schedule, this may be a good structure to try. You still get to get together and talk about books you love, and you can do it without expectation.
M. Suzanne Terry 
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