This is part of our 100 Things in 2014 challenge. Here’s the full list.

Becky’s been part of several book clubs over the years, and she’s been missing it.
Unfortunately, almost every one had devolved over time into a “wine-drinking and chatting” club, where hardly anyone ever read the book.
So our book club’s name is The Book Reader’s Book Club for the Reading of Books.

Becky is the captain of this ship, and she cast her net fairly wide for the book choices. Most of them were excellent, and we’d recommend every one except Warm Bodies:

• May: Arcadia, by Lauren Groff
• June: Gulp, by the most excellent Mary Roach
• July: The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
• September: Something from the Oven, by Laura Shapiro
• October: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes
• November: Warm Bodies, by Isaac Marion

[Side note: Warm Bodies isn’t a bad book. It’s unique, fairly well-written, and suspenseful. But compared to some of the other outstanding books on this list, it just didn’t have the depth we were used to.]

The turnout varied almost directly with the subject matter:

Lesson learned: people won’t read non-fiction, and they can’t get enough zombies (even if the zombie book isn’t super good).

We loved doing this. We made some new friends, reconnected with some old ones, and read some terrific books. The club is still going, and if you’d like to join, let us know, or just follow along at home. Here’s what we’re reading next:

• January: The Emigrants, by Vilhelm Moberg
• February: The Romantic Movement, by Alain de Botton
• March: A Gift Upon the Shore, by M. K. Wren
• April: The Missing Person, by Doris Grumbach
• May: Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver
• June: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller