Skip to main content

These Are a Few of my Favorite Things: On Being Pub People, First Borns and Book Lovers



 A little over a year ago, at one of my very best friends weddings, an idea for a book club was born.  After that discussion, dancing commenced and wine was drank and a few weeks later I could not get the idea out of my head.  So I reached out to the two girls I had discussed it with (and another dear friend) and we decided to move forward and see where it went.  We had all been in book clubs before, but for one reason or another they had ended, and we were all feeling like we would give it a shot, but didn’t have the highest of expectations, especially since no one knew each other.  The common threads were friendship with me and a love for reading.


When we got together to discuss what books we wanted to read at my house over Mexican food and margaritas it became obvious that this group had the potential to be kind of amazing.  No one jinxed it for awhile though, we kept meeting and reading and discussing and as the chemistry got better and better we realized that we had stumbled into something life giving.  We started openly talking about how much we looked forward to our debates and how book club is shifting into a priority for all of us.  Now we get together once a month and all our type A, first born child personalities are fueled by the structure we have set up – Monday nights in a local pub where we each pick a book every round and we sit over dinner and drinks considering each other’s take on whatever we have read for that month.  

It’s hard to explain the magic of our little group, but it’s just glorious.



We recently celebrated our 1 year anniversary of book club, and y’all, I think this could go on for a lot of years.  The pictures above include the books we read together over the last year, and I loved that we immensely enjoyed some of them and forced our way through others.  We tried to pick a variety ranging from a couple of memoirs to mysteries to a short story circuit.  I look forward to every time we get together and the inevitable fish and chips one of us orders. 

Cheers ladies!  
To one year down and many more to come!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

In the Nursery: Whole Hearted Parenting Manifesto

I recently finished a book by Brene Brown titled, DaringGreatly .  It really moved me, and I am definitely still processing it. At the beginning of the book I wasn’t resonating deeply with the topic of vulnerability, as most people will tell you I am an “open book”.  I will answer most questions without holding back and love to deep dive into good conversation.  However, what I came to realize through her many examples is that we all wrestle with vulnerability, guilt and shame throughout this book even if is more momentary than constant.  I gleaned SO MUCH from this book that I did not anticipate, and I thought I would share this Parenting Manifesto that she put right at the end of the book.  I am printing it and framing it for our nursery, as I think it communicates some deep parts of my heart cry for parenting my kiddos well. I hope this resonates with someone else as much as it did with me.   I needed these words to remind me that parenting is not a checklist,

A Penny For Your Thoughts - Looking Back & Missing Italy

 I took this my first day in Italy, and will always remember my town just like this... I realized something about my writing the other day, and that is that I am much more present in my writing than I am in my brain.   I am constantly thinking back, but I never write about my past.   Sure, I write a story here or there reminiscing on my African travel, but rarely do you hear about my life pre-California unless it is in reference to my family.   Lately, I have found myself pining for Italy.   Did you know I lived there?   Probably not, because I rarely mention it! I knew I was going to love it there, but it has stuck with me since the moment I left.   I have wanted to go back every   minute of every day since then.   The simplicity of life, the emphasis on slowing down, the architecture, the food, the flowers, the people, the color, the trains, the bikes, the gelato, the smiles and laughter, the wine, and the cities are only scratching the surface of things I love from the bea

At the Library - May through September 2019 Reading

We had another baby in May (SO much more on that later) and blogging has obviously taken a back seat, but I am still reading for pleasure and have managed, in my sons first four months of life, to complete these 8 books!  Y'all, I remember a time when even completing 2 books a year would have sincerely sounded daunting, much less with a newborn.  If you want to read more, you can find the time!  Take stock of your days and see where you are wasting hours.  For some of these, I listened to the audio book while I was pumping or watering the garden.   Rather than give you an individual breakdown of each of these books, I just want to report I found them all incredibly enjoyable.  A total cross section of a food memoir to a psychology deep dive to nature centric novels, I would recommend them all in different capacities.   We have fallen a bit behind on our Bible reading, but we WILL finish by the end of the year. You do not make it to September