Two Book Groups

I have two books to read in the next two weeks for two book clubs. 

I’ve been in a mother-daughter book club since my daughter was in fifth grade, and that’s a lot of years ago.  Our mother-daughter book club consisted of five moms and five daughters from different towns.  We had all belonged to a Mother’s Center when our daughters were just a few months old, and we reconnected to form this group.

Fast forward all these years, and now we are five women with grown daughters living in different states, but we moms still meet every two months or so. We have formed such a close bond as we saw our children through so many life changes. We read books like Are you there, God, it’s me Margaret and talked about puberty and growing up issues. We talked about our daughters going off to college, and what they and we needed in order to be fully prepared.  And now we’ve seen marriages happen and one of the daughters has a baby of her own.  We moms continue to meet and talk about issues facing us today, and we still read good books. 

My new book group was formed out of the Anti-Racism Project I was involved with this past fall.  We just started this book club and have met once to discuss the first half of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. It is a beautifully written book about the migration from the south to the north in this country (1915-1970). It was a topic I wasn’t much interested in nor knew much about, but I found myself loving the writing and am completely engrossed in the story.  It is creative nonfiction, I would say.  We are reading the second half now for our second meeting.

Being in a book group has introduced me to so many great books and stories, but it has also enriched my life emotionally and socially.   I love the women from my mother-daughter book group, and I am excited to get to know better my new book group people.