My virtual book club just started its third year, and last week I mailed out the prizes to the big winners from 2016. We don’t read a set book each month, we just read whatever we want and talk about it. The past 2 years I gave out prizes for the most books read, the most pages read, and the most audiobook time listened. This year we’ve moved over to Goodreads, and we’re just straight tracking the number of books read. So, next January I’ll announce a first, second, and third place winner.
Tag: book club
So last summer I got this idea that I wanted to do a summer reading program for grownups. As a librarian I have seen countless summer reading initiatives to keep kids reading during their off-school months, but I kind of wanted to do this with grownups. Virtually, so you could participate from anywhere, at any time. And give away prizes!
Read more on 2016 Reading Challenge for Grownups–Want to Join?…
It took me a while, but I finally got all of the prizes out the door from the summer reading club for grownups. I didn’t even take any photos; one of the winners sent this one to me after she received her prize (thanks, JJ!).
My sorority alumna group has a book club, and I’d volunteered ages ago to host in October. Today was the day. We read Jennifer Weiner’s Best Friends Forever, but actually only 2 of the 8 women at book club read the book. This was another example of me realizing that September is a bad month to expect to do things like read books for book club. I had a single-minded focus on school, so everything else just took a backseat.
But I have to say, I’m really happy with the spread I put out. Cake, apples and caramel, chips and sour cream salsa, cheese and pepperoni with crackers. And I absolutely stole Maggie’s Christmas in July idea of a decorate your own cookie station. I cheated on the cookies and used one of those Pillsbury ready-to-bake packages when I ran out of time, and they were a hit. I made the vanilla frosting but not the chocolate. I went with a blue/tan/brown color scheme, and I hung the card catalog fabric I had made from Spoonflower last fall.
My handwriting on cakes is as bad as it is in real life, but I still like my book club cake. I made a chocolate cake in a loaf pan, trimmed it all around, then covered it with a layer of vanilla frosting. I put it in the fridge overnight, then I covered the “spine” and “front cover” with chocolate frosting (ready made) so it would look like a book. I piped more chocolate frosting all around the bottom edge to look like the back cover of the book. I put “BFF” on the spine since that’s the abbreviation for our book’s title. The lettering is sloppy, but the cake still went over really well.
I didn’t go with the Devil’s Food Cake today, since it takes kind of a while to make. Here are the cake recipes, with my changes:
I read Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife over the summer. Actually, I listened to the audio book. It was the next title for my book club, so I read it. Book club was postponed a couple of times, but we finally met on Monday to discuss the book. I’d been waiting to post about it until then, to get some perspective.