One of the questions the book club gets asked most often is how we decide which books we want to read for the year. The following is a more detailed response to this question given by two of our current book club members.

We just finished selecting our books for 2019.  So, you ask how does it happen?  How do we do it?

In our earlier history as a book club, we picked our books one month in advance.  Since we wanted to read books by African-American authors, there were not nearly as many to choose from in 1991 as there are today.

At the end of a book club meeting, we would decide on the next month’s book to read by just throwing out titles and authors that we knew about.  Reviews from Essence Magazine were often referred to, as were readings from local book stores.  We often and usually had spirited, sometimes hilarious discussions, (depending on the theme of the book) deciding which book to read each month.  Then the decision was voted on by a quick show of hands, what the next book would be.

This process worked for several years until the genre of African American authors became a much larger part of the publishing industry.  Now there all kinds of books and topics to choose from, including more from African-American men who were also writing fiction. We definitely needed a better system for choosing our books!  We also had heard a rumor that another successful book club was choosing their books a year in advance.

In the fall of 2009, we finally decided on a new process for picking our books. We would now start during our October meeting, which is when we created a list of potential reads.  Some members brought books they might have read during the year or on their own.  A few members consistently suggested books they had signed at a bookstore or a reading event during the year, and everyone submitted the names of books they had heard about or read a review on.

By doing it this way we then ended up with about 30–35 suggestions.  As you can imagine, this October meeting became a regular debate as favorites were lobbied and supported.  The discussion sometimes got heated, but remember the goal was to end up with the best books for our group.  After all the suggestions were recorded, we took another couple of weeks to forward the list to one member who organizes the titles for VOTING.  During these weeks some new titles may drift in, but then at the November meeting the magic happens.

We each get a copy of the list about a week before the voting.  The list includes descriptions of the books which we get from the internet, and the rating for the book on Amazon.com.  The rating occasionally tips the scale once we’re voting.  In an effort to keep the “smack talking” under control, we simply run through the list with each member saying yes to her choices.  Usually 6-8 are chosen by each person in this first round.  In the next round, we just vote for the titles getting the most votes in the earlier step.  It’s during this final round that things move along a lot quicker and we settle on the books to be read in the coming year.

For 2018 our selection list ended up with several political subjects and a few non-fiction titles.  So our focus in 2019 is to relax a bit and to emphasize reading less intense, more fun titles instead. Hopefully learning about our process for choosing our books was insightful but whatever process you use we hope it gets you reading some good books!

In February of 1995 on a rainy, overcast morning, I missed my express bus to work. So the next bus I took was the regular local.  Unlike the express, this bus traveled a few blocks, then turned to go up a long, imposing hill, before entering the expressway to downtown Seattle.

I sat by the window when I got on and at the next stop on the hill, several people entered. One of the women passengers sat next to me and proceeded to open a novel she was reading.  I noticed it was White Butterfly by Walter Mosley, his third book in the Easy Rawlins mystery series.  I was already a fan of the author from the first book in the series, Devil In A Blue Dress, as well as, the movie with Denzel Washington as the lead character.  She told me she was enjoying this book as well as his previous ones.

We chatted for the rest of the bus trip and found out that we had some things in common, including her son and my daughter who were classmates at the high school.

Doris also told me about the book club she was in that concentrated on African-American writers, a growing segment of the book publishing industry at the time.  She invited me to their next meeting, to see if I would be interested in joining the book club.  I thanked her, gave her my phone number, and said I would come to the next meeting.

When I attended that initial meeting, who knew it would be the first meeting of many for years to come.  I was warmly welcomed by a group of women, who I would later learn I had lots in common with.  I decided right then to join the group and have been a member since almost the beginning. When I think back at how things happen and are at times meant to be, what a blessing it was that I actually missed that express bus on that particular morning.