Reading About Reading Groups

I just found out that October is "National Reading Group Month," the brainchild of two members of the Women's National Book Association. For more information on this annual event, check out the website.

In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to find some books featuring Book Clubs and their members and see what adventures and mischief these fictional groups get into.  Here are a few titles to get you started.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik
From the initial formation of The Freesia Court Book Club and over the course of the next thirty years, five women in small-town Minnesota share the events, triumphs, tragedies, hardships, joys, and sorrows of their lives.

A Killer Read by Erika Chase
When the first meeting of the Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society results in murder, Lizzie Turner teams up with the police chief to catch the killer.

The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal by Sam Dixon

The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Women's Book Club has been meeting regularly since its members' student days when a couple of them attended a reading of Michael Ondaatje's "In the Skin of the Lion" . Since that time, although their selections have been the standard literary book club fare, their discussions have been anything but. They don't so much read the books as reenact them, going so far as to find appropriate settings for each. Their latest discovery is a book written in cuneiform on clay tablets, which turns out to be The Epic of Gilgamesh .

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler

Six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.

Once Upon A Kiss by Jayne Fresina

Enjoying a salacious romance called "Pride and Prejudice" with the fellow members of her book club, Justina Penny of the sleepy village of Hawcombe Prior attempts to match a proud newcomer and her sweet sister.