The best way I know of the celebrate the holidays with a book club?
My neighborhood book group has been gathering for an annual holiday book swap for as long as we’ve been gathering. Last night, we did it again. We bring eats (mostly cookies of various sorts), drinks (mostly wine), and a wrapped book. See below for this years list, and our stealing record. (The details on how we do it is below the list.)
For a copy of one of my books (your choice, except The Wednesday Sisters, as I don’t have any of those at the moment) have a guess at what I brought and what I took home! (Random drawing if more than one of you guesses correctly.)
And if you’d like to arrange for me to visit your book group (in person in Palo Alto or by Skype or phone elsewhere), email me at wednesdaysisters@gmail.com. I’ll be visiting up to 50 groups this year.
Happy Holidays!
Meg
Grammercy Tavern Cookbook*/*
In the Unlikely Event (signed)***
Fortune Smiles (signed)***/**
Last Orders and Sense of an Ending***/**
My Life on the Road and NotoriousRBG***/***
Shine Shine Shine and Speak*
Notorious RBG
If Only Someone Had Told Me
Fates and Furies***
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles
M Train and Patti Smith: Camera Solo*
Our Souls at Night
Circling the Sun
*=stolen
/=difference between first and second round
The Book Group Holiday Book Swap, Wednesday Sisters Style
I’m sure there are lots of ways to have fun with a Book Club at the holidays, but the Wednesday Sisters Book Group does a book swap in lieu of a December Meeting every year, and it is a ton of fun:
Step 1: Everyone brings a book they enjoyed reading (not one we’ve ever read for the group), wrapped in swanky paper and bows. (Mine is always the pathetic-looking one; I clearly flunked Fancy Wrapping 101!)
Step 2: We pile the presents in the center of our circle, then we draw numbers. No, wait! First, we pour whatever we are drinking and nosh a little. (The first year, we had margaritas at a local restaurant, but after that we decided we were best off doing pot luck at someone’s house so we could all walk home.) Okay, so thenwe draw numbers (nothing fancy, just numbered scraps of paper thrown into a bowl).
Step 3: The person who drew #1 gets to pick and open a present. Feeling and shaking of unopened packages is definitely permitted.
Step 4: Whoever brought that book tells us all a little about it.
Step 5: #2 then gets a choice: to opened another package or to steal #1’s book. If she chooses to steal, #1 opens a second book.
Step 6: #3 then gets the open or steal choice, and can steal any of the books that have been opened. If she steals, say, #1’s book, #1 can steal #2’s book or open a new package.
We go on like that until everyone has a book, with the caveat that once a book has been stolen 3 times, it can’t be stolen again, except that…
Step 8: Once everyone has an opened book, #1 can put her book in the center and steal any book she wants, even the thrice stolen ones. At which point the stealing goes on until someone wants the book in the center.
It’s really great fun, and we end up knowing a lot about new books we might read, even if we didn’t get to take them home.
