My Favorite Book Club Reads

When I was a little girl, I loved reading books. From elementary to high school, I could easily spend my entire day reading a book. Big books took me 3 days to read. I was so engulfed in books because it was a great escape from reality. You knew the book was good when I got mad, cried, or laughed. If my church had a reading challenge? Oh, I was in it! Outside-of-church book challenges? Oh, you couldn’t tell me anything when I was one of the top 3 winners of the Dayton branch NAACP reading challenge!

One of my fondest memories of reading in high school was sharing a book with my friends. I remember some of the books being the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series. One of us either bought or borrowed the books and then we’d trust each other enough to allow people to borrow the book. Once one was finished, the other would read it next. Each person took less than a week to read it and we’d talk about it. Now that I think about it, you would consider it an unofficial book club.

I wasn’t able to read leisurely when I entered college. I can recall reading maybe one book series for fun, the Divergent series. I also learned to enjoy non-fiction books, like Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman and Weird by Craig Groeschel. At some point during that time, I was in a book club and I enjoyed it. Most of the time I wasn’t reading fiction books for fun anymore; so I didn’t make time for it.

Post-College years didn’t make it any better… haha! Life was life-ing and being an adult meant adulting, so there wasn’t much time to read leisurely anymore. I briefly remember a book club that didn’t last, and that was the only time I read anything. I am in groups on Facebook that encouraged me to read what they were reading. I also have a couple of author friends, so I read their books. So, I guess you can say that I read now and then 🙂

Then the Pandemic hit. At that point, I didn’t read as much as I’d liked. A sister-friend of mine started a book club that I am committed to. This was the push I needed to read a lot more than I wanted. Also, I wanted to support my friend as she supports me. I enjoyed being able to get so engulfed in a book that I forget the real world. We’re only about 2.5 years old and read over 20 books so far, but we have so much fun reading and talking about the book… and yes… adding the element of alcohol makes it top-tier 😉

In this day and time, it would take me months to read one book. At my ripe age, I find listening to a book more convenient. Over the few years that we’ve read together, I have a few that have been my favorite so far:

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Listening to this book through Audible felt like I was reading a juicy autobiography. I loved the narration of the book. The narrators did an awesome job. This book had some unexpected events that I did not even predict. I knew that the book was about Evelyn’s seven husbands, but the strategy behind them was CRAZY good. At the same time, Evelyn has gone through abuse by her father growing up. So I think it was pretty easy for her to marry those many times. Oh, you eventually realize that the love of her life wasn’t any of the husbands she married because Evelyn is bisexual! Evelyn and her “friend’s” relationship decisions in the 60s are WILD! I’m sure this is how they had to do things to prevent being exposed! Hiding who you are in the 20th century is WILD! Whew! We loved it. 

Any Book Written by Brittainy Cherry

Bro, we love Brittainy Cherry! Her writing style is enticing. We started with “The Wreckage of Us,” which was so good. Then we ended up reading more books from her. Some of them I listened to personally, like two of her books in the Compass Series. The other two were our book club reads of that month.

Bamboozled by Jesus by Yvonne Orji

Can I just say that Yvonne Orji is one of my favorite people after this book? She shared her life and her life’s lessons. Her interpretation of the Bible is ME wrapped in a bow! You should seriously see my book, as it has so many highlighter marks in it. I was deep sighing whenever I used my highlighter after the last paragraph haha! I don’t know how to summarize this book, so I’ll just give a few of the takeaways that stuck with me. 

• God wants to give you a blank disk, erasing everything He didn’t program in you.
• When God didn’t change the situation, He altered how I reacted to it. 
• Your wins will happen the way God intended!
• You may be wearing sneakers in a situation where God told you to put slippers on. Take them off!
• Faith without works is a dead-end street, but believing is the juice that turns their street lights on. 
• Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, stab yourself! 
• If you could receive God’s yes with praise, why can’t you receive God’s no with trust? 

What Are My Realistic Book Goals?

Well, I first would like to say going to book club. I love it. My next goal is to finish the book before book club. Life be life-ing, so there were times last year when I didn’t finish the book. I still would like to finish the book to add more to our discussions haha. Lastly, I would like to read two books this year by paper or Kindle. 

I guess you can say that I’m fulfilling my inner child of reading books 🙂 Do you have any book goals? I’d love to know! Hopefully, you’re able to fulfill an activity that makes your inner child happy this year.

Happy New Year

~Live Laugh Love~