This story begins the way any good story should begin: with a castle.
It’s a fiberglass castle, actually. Hurricane resistant, too, if you can believe it. And I wasn’t even dressed for a castle that day. I was wearing a t-shirt and an athleisure skort. Showing up any better dressed than that, and folks might mistake me for one of the residents. Not that that would be such a bad thing, actually…
Fine. Disney. I was at Disney.
During a midday break in our family’s one-day-only trip to Magic Kingdom, I saw a text from a friend of mine. She invited me to take part in a start-up book club, one with an emphasis on (a) actually reading the book and (b) being as fancy as possible with our monthly book club discussion gatherings. This is… surprisingly groundbreaking for a lot book clubs nowadays. There are lots of “book clubs” out there that are thinly veiled excuses to binge drink with a bunch of people and/or chat so much that no one actually discusses a book (or, in the worst case scenarios, they don’t actually ever read the book.)
It sounded good to me. I was then added to the Fancy Book Club group chat on WhatsApp, and… I missed the first three meetings.
By May, I finally came to my first meeting. May’s book was The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar, a dual-timeline historical novel telling the stories of the lives of people who knew Vincent Van Gogh well. Our cake was decorated to look like Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We discussed the book for over an hour (and this was after dinner and chitchat). It was the best first taste of Fancy Book Club—a monthly gathering that I’ve come to love for so many reasons. Here are just a few.
We take turns. One of our members had the good idea to create a shared spreadsheet to schedule out the year. Members take turns hosting in pairs. We’ve been to one another’s houses, but we’ve also had meetings in an old tannery warehouse, an RV, and a distillery. Someone once brought up that she’d talked to someone who had run a book club for decades, and she always, always, always plays host. She has to buy the food. She has to mix drinks. She has to clean house. What a nightmare. I’m grateful that we share the hosting responsibilities among our members—less pressure, less stress, and more fun to see how everyone chooses to decorate/theme/host. Best of all: we have a fabulous December meeting each year, where instead of a book discussion, we gather at our local rooftop bar and participate in a blind-date-with-a-book style book exchange.
We all get to vote on book selections. Every month, the hosts will come up with a shortlist of books for the club to choose from, usually centered around a theme (romance, historical, literary, even—gasp!—nonfiction). We’ll read descriptions and vote on our favorites. The choice with the most votes is the book we’ll read that month. It’s more fun when we can have some options—and, more often than not, even the ones that don’t win the poll will be ones I’ll add to my TBR. This ensures we have a wide range of books to discover from lots of folks with differing reading preferences. (We also may or may not have an annual tradition where one month is “Petty Book Club” and the hosts will select a book that didn’t make the cut earlier that year. It was only once, but it should be an annual tradition. Without the temporary switchover to Petty Book Club, I would have never been introduced to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and that would have been a darn shame.
We read outside of our comfort zones. We’re not a one-genre book club. Because we have diverse interests, Fancy Book Club has read contemporary literary fiction, romcoms, historical dramas, fantasy, among many other sub-genres. October’s book club pick was Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I have never voluntarily picked up anything even horror-adjacent in my life (real life is already scary; why would I want anything even more frightening?!), but this was one of my favorite books of the year. I have read books that I would have never chosen on my own. In turn, I have learned so much more about the various experiences, perspectives, and people that make up our world.
We’re an amazing bunch. Fancy Book Club includes some familiar friends as well as some new-to-me-since-book-club-started friends. Some of these women are actual Pinterest Boards of hosting ideas, many are astonishingly skilled at crafting a gorgeous meal. Mixologists, teachers, party planners, parents, leaders—it’s like our very own Barbie World full of bookworms. Icons everywhere.
We’re different readers. We have different perspectives on life. Some are introverts; some are extroverts. We’ve got different strengths. But we do have a profound shared love of books and getting out the fancy serveware once a month Just Because.
If you find yourselves blessed with a book club that feels like a warm, welcoming, decadent party, one where life’s crazy anecdotes meets thought-provoking literary discussion, then you are blessed indeed.
I know I am.
