Behind the Book Club

When the suggestion to bring back the Parent Book Club came up during one of the Parent Roadmap meetings, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Like most of you, I’m a busy parent with (what feels like) very little free time. Reading, which is one of my favorite pastimes, typically takes a backseat to everything else. A book is a permanent fixture on my nightstand as I have a goal to read at least a chapter every night before bed, but I’ll be honest and say that book ends up serving as more of a coaster than reading material most of the time. I’m sure we all make those same promises to ourselves; the ones where we commit to more “me” time to pursue hobbies, new interests, or just curl up with a good book for a few minutes a day. But then life happens and our kids, our partners, and our responsibilities take precedence. We end up moving ourselves and our “me” moments down on our priority lists, sometimes until they fall off the list altogether. We know it’s not healthy, but we also know that no one has managed to stuff more than 24 hours in a day yet. 

I knew participating in a book club would make me accountable and force me to actually make time for reading. Better yet, volunteering to lead the Sora Parent Book Club would crank that accountability up a notch. So, I reached out to Rachel, got paired up with a fellow parent (Yay for Tracy Chambers!) to co-lead the group, set our first meeting date and book selection, and kept my fingers crossed that other parents would show up and participate. What I wasn’t expecting was getting so much more out of Book Club than just time for my own personal reading habit. 

Currently, Book Club is reading I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. It’s a “whodunnit” thriller with a true crime twist that also touches on some very relevant, modern day topics. It was my current nightstand book when Book Club formed, so I was ecstatic when it got picked as our first group read. I’m a true crime fan and I had heard it was a must read for those of us that choose docu-series over sitcoms and listen to unsolved crime podcasts. I’m not sure everyone else in Book Club fits into that same category, but that’s part of the beauty of what we’ve found in this group. Our differences, whether it’s differing opinions, backgrounds, reading preferences, etc., have inspired such amazing discussions. Reading can be such a solitary experience that I think we forget there can be and is a wealth of perspectives out there on the same topics. Book Club reminds us of that as we discuss each of our takes on different characters, themes, and plotlines we encounter as we read further and further into the same book. I am constantly impressed and amazed at the observations brought up by my fellow Book Clubbers that never entered my own mind while reading the same pages. I was already a fan of I Have Some Questions For You as a book and of Makkai as an author after reading it on my own, but I gain new appreciation for both every week because of Book Club. 

Most of all though, I think Book Club allows each of us to stretch our minds in ways we don’t always get the chance to in our busy day to day lives. There’s something special that happens when you get to share a room, in person or virtually, with people who have a common thread tying them together. In the case of Book Club, that thread is our love of reading and the story we’re all digesting together. It reminds us that there’s more that connects us than our roles as parents/guardians to students attending the same school. It inspires new thoughts, new friendships, new opinions, new connections, new observations, and new appreciations. Book Club reminds us that those common threads exist and that it’s worth finding and exploring them together.