*Book Club Review* Twists and Page Turners Book Club - Colorado Springs

 This is becoming something of a habit for me, getting to these review posts late in the day. But we're heading into the weekend now, and my parents are going to be here Monday and Tuesday, so my goal this weekend is to get ahead and finish writing my book club reviews. But I have book club meetings both days this weekend (and they're for the two groups that I run, so I have to be there), and we are getting our taxes done tomorrow as well, so we will see how well my plans work out. 

And I could have gotten to this post earlier this evening, but after getting home from work (later than normal because traffic was awful on my route home), I still had to cook supper and then eat. And then I wanted to get my workout in. I make accountability posts on Insta when I start a workout, and there is a noticeable difference in my face since last year (and if I'd been consistent for the entire year, it would probably be even more noticeable, although there is only so much I can shed from my naturally round face). But on this day last year I also did a 3.3 mile walk and since it was in my Facebook memories, I decided to repeat that today. I completed it almost 12 whole minutes faster today than a year ago. So even if my weight wasn't any different, my fitness levels are. 

But enough about me. Let's talk about a book club. 

I've been in Twists and Page Turners Book Club for about a year and a half now (I think). I joined it when it first started, but missed the first meeting. This group is focused on thriller, horror, and mystery novels (mostly thriller). We meet at 6 pm on a Tuesday evening once every six weeks (or so. There have been a couple fluctuations due to holidays and such). The every six week thing is both nice and awful. It means that some months I have one fewer meeting to attend (which makes it easier to keep up), but it also means that some months it conflicts with Books and Booze, and then I still have one fewer meeting to attend because I can't be in two places at once. If anyone has a line on dependable cloning technology, let me know. 

This group is part democracy, part dictatorship. Cassidy is wildly organized, keeping close track of who attends what meetings, and uses that information to rotate book selection through the attending members. But the person whose turn it is to pick the book doesn't get to decide exactly what book we'll be reading. They are required to provide at least three options to be voted on by the group at large. And Cassidy and Debra then research the book options to determine how available they are (when it was my turn to pick, I provided more than three options, and pre-researched availability, but sometimes I'm an overachiever like that). Once a book is picked, then we vote on where to meet as well, with a focus on locally owned restaurants. 

Some of my favorite books from this group include Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier, Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney, and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. 

Will you join us, or are you scared? - Katie 

*Book Club Review* Colorado Springs Friends Book Club

 Well I had a day! And not a good one. Started out with me not sleeping well last night (had trouble getting to sleep at all, and maybe that's because I didn't workout the last two days, but it probably has more to do with the fact that I've always had a delayed circadian rhythm. Then I ran an errand at work, and on my way back to the office, I hit a pothole and flattened my front passenger tire. And I am a strong, independent woman, so naturally I called my husband to come fix it for me. To be fair, the car I'm driving does not have a spare tire and my husband has picked my vehicles for the entirety of our marriage (I usually have the newest car, so I can only complain about that a little), so I was in that position partially because of him. 

Anyway, I'm going to try to get to bed earlier tonight and hope that helps tomorrow be less sucky. But first, a new book club review. 

Tonight I'm focusing on the Colorado Springs Friends Book Club. This group is less than a year old, and I fear it may be the next book club I lose, in this case not because I've been kicked out but because it's foundering and we can't seem to get new members. And maybe part of the problem is that it is a generic book club that meets on a weeknight (most of my book clubs meet on Saturday or Sunday, and the few that don't largely do have a specific genre they focus on). But if we started meeting on a weekend day, I might start missing meetings anyway because of conflicts with other groups. I'm just not sure what the answer is here. This is the group that I prioritize over the Downtown Book Club because it really does need me more from my experience. There have been at least two meetings where I was one of only two attendees. And I think the meeting that I had to miss because it was moved up a week and I was in Florida for work only had one attendee. Those numbers just don't work for a book club anyway you slice it. 

If you would like to join a group where your book suggestions will hold a lot of weight, this is a great one for that. With so few of us in the group, there just aren't many suggestions being thrown out in the first place. I have personally picked three of the books we've read, and I try really hard to not be responsible for picking book club books (because if I don't finish a book I picked in time, that's way worse than not finishing a book picked by someone else). 

Some of my favorite reads from this group include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Lamb by Christopher Moore (even though I haven't finished it yet as that was the meeting I missed because Florida), and The Bone Ships by RJ Barker (although I don't recommend the audio for this one. Voices were not done well). 

Won't you join us and be our friend? - Katie 

*Book Club Review* Basecamp Books and Adventure Book Club

It was another long day, with me leaving for work before the sun was up and getting home long after it went down, again because I had a book club meeting after work. This one started an hour earlier than last night's though, and because a few of the attendees have younger children and we meet at a home, we don't stay nearly as late. But it still has me at the computer at almost 10 pm, when I should really be curled up in bed, under my heated blanket, with a book getting ready to go to sleep. 

But first, a book club review. 

Today we are talking about the Basecamp Books and Adventure Book Club. This group is hosted by a local new and used book store, and I've been a member for a little over a year I think. I was hesitant to join at first, because I make some moderate attempts to speak with my dollars (I'm not perfect at it by any means) and Basecamp Books and Adventure is a veteran owned bookstore. As the spouse of a veteran living in a military town, I know the military skews conservative, and that makes me leery. In this instance, my concern was wildly unfounded, and I give Basecamp some of my dollars nearly every month. I try to stop in for Philanthropic Fridays, but I often forget that intention when my work day is over on Friday, so I don't succeed terribly often. 

Much like Books and Booze Book Club, this group has a pretty even gender split in attendees, and is probably the most likely to have more men in attendance than women (which in my experience is quite odd for a book club). We have read a very wide range of books for this group. Everything from The Murderbot Diaries to Lonesome Dove. At each meeting, members put forth suggestions for the next month's book, and then we vote. Joe adds whatever our book club selection is to the next order he places, so there are always copies available within a week of the book being selected. We usually meet the last Sunday of the month at 6 pm when the store closes. Biggest perk of being in this book club? Getting to shop after the meetings if something caught your eye when you walked in. 

Some of my favorite reads with this group include Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, The Dead Husband Cookbook by Danielle Valentine, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John-Mandel.  

Does this sound like a group you'd want to be part of? - Katie 

*Book Club Review* Books and Booze Book Club

 It has been a long day for me. I left the house this morning before 7 am (like I always do for work) and then I had book club this evening at 7 pm, and I don't come home after work if I have extracurricular activities, even when those activities don't start for a couple/few hours after I get off work. That is doubly true of this book club, because it meets about two blocks from where I work. Like I don't even fasten my seatbelt to drive there half the time, and my car doesn't even yell at me about it. In an interesting twist of fate, that meeting was for THIS book club. So even though I had this review pre-written, what ends up published will probably only vaguely resemble what I already wrote. 

On that note, let's go. 

This group is an off-shoot of the big Colorado Springs Book Club and it goes by lots of names, none of them actually official. I refer to it as Books and Booze book club because we pretty much always meet at a brewery, and it's usually Storybook Brewery. Most of the members just call it Mid-Month book club, because we meet around the middle of the month. And Gregory calls it Tam's Sci-Fi Adventures, because this group has really allowed her to embrace her love of science fiction. 

This group is managed on StoryGraph, which I know but consistently forget, and it kind of causes problems for me. With 18 in person book clubs, I really need the event reminders in Facebook to tell me what book I need to read next, and when I need to have it read by. I'm not sure I even know how to read a book without a deadline induced panic anymore. We select books by rotating through the usual attendees (and this group has the most consistent core group of all my book clubs. It also has more gender balance in attendees than most of my book clubs). At this point, we have books selected several months out, which is where knowing that information is listed on StoryGraph is important. We do a pretty good job of talking about the chosen book for about an hour before the conversation devolves into Anna just yelling about the state of the world (there was so much yelling tonight about Demon Copperhead and how relevant it is. But we also stayed more on topic than normal, which was weird). And sometimes we have barely related PowerPoint Presentations about things like the new Jurassic Park movie (Scarlet Johansen is hot) and lizard people (I'm not a lizard person). 

Some of my favorite books read in this group were Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus, and Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane. This was a difficult list to come up with, because I haven't loved most of the books we've read in this group (and that includes the ones I've picked). 

I said The Next Chapter isn't just a book club, we're friends. I'm going to go a step further here. Books and Booze feels more like family, a dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless. 

Is this a group you'd want to be adopted into? - Katie 

*Book Club Review* Colorado Springs Book Club (2.0)

It's Monday, which means I had work. When I got home, the boy child wanted to drive and pick up supper for himself, as well as getting something to take for lunch on a field trip tomorrow. Since he still needs to get his driving hours in to get his license, I was not inclined to say no. Then we got home and my husband wanted to talk about his night at work, which just means I got to everything else I planned to do this evening later than I wanted to. 

I have book club meetings the next two nights, and both of them tend to go pretty late, so I need to get ahead on these reviews, so I don't end up behind again. In retrospect, I really should have put more thought into this, but I'm a rather impulsive person in general. 

But let's get into it. 

Today I'm reviewing the other Colorado Springs Book Club group (because of course I'm in both of them). I have been in this group for just over a year now (which I know because my first meeting was when they'd selected Onyx Storm for the book, just after it released). This is a group that I almost didn't go back to. There was a fairly large group at my first meeting, they all seemed like close friends, and I felt like an interloper. On top of that, it seemed like they were all young military wives, and I'm just at a different stage of my life than that. So why did I go back? Two of the women I was sitting next to at that first meeting put in some serious work to make me feel welcome and included. They were the type of military spouse that I needed but never found when my husband was active duty. And as a person who has no plans to move again, I can at least provide some stability for the group. Now I'm glad I stuck it out as most of the members when I joined have PCSd and attendance has dropped (I'm needed!)

This group is technically a generic book club, with no specified genre, but it leans pretty heavily towards romantasy. The meeting locations change, with a focus on locally owned restaurants, but we always meet the first Sunday of the month at 3 pm, so at least I always know when I have to have the book finished and when I'm busy. 

Some of my favorite reads from this group include Say You'll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez, Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry and The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. 

Is this a group you'd want to join? - Katie  

*Book Club Review* Colorado Springs Thrills and Chills Book Club

 It's been a busy day at my house. I talked about doing a Costco run with the husband in my last post, but after that I still had to do things like cook supper and wash laundry so I'll have clean clothes to wear to work all week. A part of me really wants to expand my wardrobe so that if I'm feeling particularly lazy one week, I could just skip the laundry thing, but I don't want to do that while I'm actively on a "fitness" journey (let's be real, I'm really trying to lose some/most of this excess weight, and I've been seeing some results, but I still have a ways to go on that score). Plus, this body still isn't fun to dress. 

Since I still have one book club review to write to be caught up, let's get to it. 

This review is of the second group that I'm incredibly biased about, because I run it, still chaotically. I'm not surprisingly more organized for this group than I expect to be for Fantasy book club. Weird, I know. Much like Fantasy Book Club, I started running this one because the thriller book club that I had found and joined quickly became defunct. I don't know what happened there, but I may have been the problem just trying to keep it going when the creator failed to show up to the second meeting. In any case, I'd joined a thriller book club because it's the one major genre that I don't naturally gravitate towards, and I didn't want to lose it (and I didn't know that there was already another thriller book club option in town at the time). Obviously I feel like this is the best of the four thriller book clubs that I know of in town (and that's a lie. The other three are much more organized, and if you enjoy thrillers, I'd recommend joining all of them.) 

Much like Fantasy Book Club, this group meets at the same place, at the same time, on the same day of the month (3rd Sunday at 2:30 pm at Slice 420 on Oro Blanco). I just do not have the bandwidth to spread our business around like the other groups I'm in do. This can be a problem when the locations I've chosen are closed for holidays like Easter (that happened last year and I had to call a mulligan and host at my house). 

In this group, we pick books three months in advance, which you would think would make it easier for me to post the events in a timely fashion, and once I actually get ahead on them maybe it will. But we've been picking books this way for over a year and so far I have not gotten ahead of the game. Will this post be the motivation to do it now? Probably not. 

Some of my favorite reads with this group include Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak, In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead, and The September House by Carissa Orlando. 

Do you think my thriller group will come out on top? - Katie 

*Book Club Review* Colorado Springs Atheist Book Club

 I was way too tired after book club last night to want to dive into writing another book club review, so I just didn't do that. But then my husband suggested going to Costco today, and I needed to get more ground beef for meals, so we did that, and then I had to portion out the ground beef (about 14 pounds of it) for freezing, so once again I feel behind on what I'm doing. On top of that, I have to read almost all of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver by 7 pm Tuesday for book club, and I also have to work the next two days. I have the physical book, and I just don't want to cave and get the audio on this one since I can't access it through the library. But if I don't get back on track with these book club reviews, I'm not going to get through my bracket before March is over. 

On that note, let's get into my next review. 

Today I'll be reviewing the local Atheist Book Club. I was invited to this group by someone who decided in November that they no longer want to associate with me on a friend level, and I have to assume it's based on things someone else said about me based on the timing. They've claimed that's not the case, but I read way too much to not have a decent grasp on human behavior, and this is a person I thought I knew pretty well. I was clearly wrong because I would have expected for them to at least ask about my side of the story, like I did when I heard negative stories about them. But not everyone has the same morals I do. 

Anyway, I've only been in attendance for two meetings with this group so far. I missed the last meeting as I just wasn't feeling well after Aunt Flo showed up while I was at work. Normally I wouldn't let that stop me, but I just didn't have the energy and wanted to head home and be a vegetable for the evening. A part of me regrets that decision, because the book conversations in this group have been very interesting, and we were going to be discussing The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, and I was really excited to see what others thought about Clinton's involvement with the book. 

This group does way more than just a book club though. They host roundtable discussions, hikes, coffee meet-ups, I think there's an annual camping trip. I really don't have a good handle on all this group has to offer yet as my focus has been on the book club. If you're local looking for an aggressively non-religious group, this would probably be a good one for you to check out. 

The two other books that I've read for this group were The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger and Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. They are pretty intentional in switching between genres, and time periods within certain genres like historical fiction. They are also super organized with spreadsheets for past reads. I want to be more like them when I grow up. 

How will they compare against other book clubs? - Katie