I recently hosted the final day of my summer reads threesome book club, which SHOULD mean I’m about to take a little break from ‘book clubbing’. But I don’t believe in breaks because reading good books is a year-round activity for me so Wordfest and I are continuing the book club into the Fall and Winter. Yes, you read that right, my book club is now year-round, because the discussions are getting too spicy to stop! This is my happy face:

For the month of August we read Kate Hilton‘s Just Like Family, which is about a career woman who’s struggling to keep her love life, work life, family and friendships together. Sound familiar? This is why we picked it, because so many woman (and men) can relate to this problem.

Observations about characters; their motivations, their composition and their interactions with other characters seem to inform the majority of our book club conversations. Clearly we are a literary group just dying for some constructive, intelligent conversation. In fact something that became most apparent to me during our event was the need and desire for the semblance of realism in our reading. Although many  read for escapist purposes, we still want our characters to say and do things that would ‘likely’ happen in real life, and we’re quick to point out when something is too far-fetched, even in a comedic novel. This took up a considerable amount of our conversation around Hilton’s book.

The best part about this most recent event was that we were all a bit hopped up on sugar, thanks to the delicious treats from Pretty Sweet, a local bakery I’m definitely going to be visiting again in the near future. There was so much more to talk about, and we had a ton of questions for the author, so I’m excited to announce that I’ll be interviewing Hilton on September 20 when she comes to Calgary to promote this book, you can buy tickets here. 

In the meantime, Tom Perrotta‘s newly-released Mrs. Fletcher is our next read, and September 27 is when the discussion is happening so mark that on your calendars! Tickets will be available shortly…tune into my twitter where I will post the link as soon it’s available.