I joined a book club earlier this year. Non-fiction topics between four hundred and five hundred pages. Book choices with page lengths were not mandatory. It just happened that the books that were suggested and agreed by all members were at least four hundred pages in length. We needed to have read the book and be ready to discuss it in one month. 

The books we have read so far are interesting, enlightening and sometimes heavy usually as a consequence of the subject. Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book 1929 was one the book club chose and one I really wanted to read. Another was The Splendid and the Vile written by Erik Larson. Both were well researched and written and about five hundred pages. I was keen to read 1929 because of the subject matter, the history, the players and because it was written by a journalist I admire. Historical non-fiction are Erik Larsen’s speciality. I learn a lot about history from his books. 

The problem, for me, with being in a book club, is that, well, lately it is starting to feel like homework. I like taking my time reading books. One month deadlines to read a book and be prepared to discuss it is a little overwhelming. I can do it. I have done it. It’s usually the only book I read for that one month. All my free time is spent reading the book club selection. I try to fit it into my work week and when I can on the weekend. And then the few days before the next meeting I am cramming. 

I prefer reading at my own pace. Sometimes I will be reading two or three books at the same time for the that very reason. When I was reading a tome by Doris Kearn Goodwin, my favorite histoical biography author, I had to take a break and put it aside to read something else on my TBR list, something mystical or something light. And then I am ready to pick back up Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book. As happened with The Bully Pulpit. (a triple historical biography on President’s Roosevelt, Taft and journalism’s golden age – nine hundred nine pages.) 

Reading is relaxing for me, meditative,  a past time. One of my grandmothers called it her ‘sleeping pill’ because she would read a  paragraph or a page of her book and then fall asleep. I know exactly what she meant.  It is so satisfying,

 With this month’s book selection finished (a doable three hundred pages), I am now reading a book that was started a few months ago  from my TBR pile while commuting to New York City on the train. It is quite a departure from historical non-fiction and biographies.  A novel by Scottish – English author, Catriona Silvey’s Meet Me in Another Life.”  I will have it finished in time to read the next book club selection. 

Perhaps the next book we read will take me through the summer months and still allow me  time to read a few more books from my TBR pile (Patti Smith’s Bread of Angels; The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalano and Kate Quinn’s The Astral Library).

Wherever I am reading, on the train, at the beach and before I go to sleep, will be relaxing.