I Love Clubbing Or Why Every Book Lover Should Be In a Book Club, and Why My Book Club in Particular Is Awesome.

There aren't many things better than a good book. One thing that is, though, is being able to share your love. And I can't think of a better way than doing that than by having a group of like-minded people who meet regularly to pour out their feelings about fictional characters.

I must warn you, my book club is probably not the normal kind. We don't usually choose a book, read it and discuss it. Our meetings tend to involve food, fangirling and many things other than books. However, we do get a lot of things done.

Having been a member of the book club for three years, I have finely tuned my debating skills. We tend to be rather serious about matters like the supporting of Hermione and Fred as a romantic couple,  the use of An Inspector Calls and if we should be  novelling for GCSE. There isn't much that we'll agree on. Except maybe that The Twilight Saga is terrible, possibly only better than it's fanfiction that none of us care to, or should, read.   

We also debate on what to read. Well, not really. With our varied tastes, it’s impossible to choose something we're all willing to read, so we just have a prompt such as Fantasy or Mystery, and we can bring what we like. Because of this, we both share interpretations of  the word prompt,  as well as books that we think fit in. And the nice thing is that we all bring different things, often things we wouldn't normally read.  Even if it doesn't seem like your thing to start with, having one of your best friends sing its praises can really persuade you in the way that no blurb ever can.

We also find new books in other ways, for example shadowing awards. Our book club yearly follows the  Carnegie Medal, reading the shortlist and discussing it and saying what we think will win, and so on. This is great fun, even though we haven't gotten it right yet!

This leads to new experiences too. A couple of years ago, we one the Shadowing Competition to go to the awards ceremony. Meeting all the authors was amazing, I have a very embarrassing picture of me and Neil Gaiman, and we generally had a lot of fun. Other things we've done as a book club- had multiple parties and quizzes, and going to the British Library to see original manuscripts and make random comments.

All in all, that leads to my main reason for having a book club. You will find some amazing people who will become your friends. You may not be like us, where we spend every spare moment together, but no matter what, you'll have a group of likeminded people to hang out with, discuss things, and share the love of reading, books, and practically everything else.