Plateau Book Clubs: Share the Wealth (of your reading)!

Plateau Book Clubs seems like a good idea for a new blog.  Is there somebody in one of the local book clubs who thinks it would be fun to start one?  I do, but I already have an Earth blog, with digressions....  I know there are quite a number of clubs in the area.  I'm thinking we could share what books our groups are reading and reactions to them, supplementary or companion materials, and info on book-related events.

For example: John and I are currently in one book club (a while back we were in three, which says #1, we like to read and talk about books and #2, since that''s past tense, three book clubs were too many).  The one we are still in was built on the remnants of the Lindon Book Club.  I'm sure there's a better word than remnants, but anyhow, some of us remnants were devastated at losing Lindon Book Store, the community center for us, and thought we would at least hang on to the book club.  We continue to miss the relationship with the owners (Hi Robin and Brianne in Edmonton, if you read Enumclaw Patch.)  We are happy to have The Sequel  now in town here, and Finally Found Books in the historic Black Diamond tavern (coming just in time to keep a bookstore there when Baker Street Books was closing).  

Our group meets at different homes once a month.  Each November we choose eleven books to read the following year.  That is always stressful, as we have many more wonderful books on our suggestion list than we can choose.  We try to read on the side some that don't get selected, which are often every bit as good as those chosen, sometimes better.  For example, three in our group have already read and found excellent Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan, which just missed making The List.  It's about photographer Edward Curtis and his lifelong effort to document Native American culture during a time period when a way of life and even whole tribes were disappearing.  Our group probably reads more literary fiction than anything, but sometimes chooses history, biographies, essays, memoirs.  Our book for February is the novel The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom, about an Irish child who is indentured as a servant at a Virginia plantation.

In January we read Thunder Dog by Michael Hingson.  It so happened that Geo, Diane Olson's newest guide-dog puppy, was ready to attend his first book-club socialization that night and provided perfect "atmosphere".  Thunder Dog is the story of Roselle, a guide dog; of her owner who is blind and works as a software sales manager in an office high in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center; and of the harrowing trip they and a trail of 30 people made down 78 floors on 9/11.  We learned a lot about blindness from the author.  Most of us were surprised and a bit disappointed that there wasn't more just about Roselle.  But we did get to follow step by step (1462 steps, actually) what an amazing job she did that terrible day.  Roselle has since passed on, but she appeared with Hingson on Larry King Live one year after 9/11.

We sometimes find interviews with our authors online.  Several of us went to hear Sherman Alexie at GRCC last week, as we had read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian a couple years ago and have Blasphemy on the list for October.

So--that's the idea.  Could someone write a blog or comment to introduce your book club?   What is your group reading?  How do you/they like it?  How is your group structured?   Is it from your neighborhood?  workplace?  church?  library?  bookstore? school?  Is it based on a particular genre, theme, philosophy, other?  Has anyone read Thunder Dog or others mentioned above?  Do you know of book events we should all know about?  Etc....?  Share what you can.  Meanwhile, happy reading....