Come sit right here by me if you’re a reader. Settle in, pour a cup of coffee, and let’s have a book chat. I want to hear what stories have kept you reading this year, and how your reading has inspired new adventures.
I’ll go first. Right now, I’m reading Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, which will be the January 2026 pick for our Kindred Spirits book club. It has me on the edge of my seat at every new twist and turn. I especially like that the setting is taking me back to our trip to Woodstock, Vermont in November of 2024, where we had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had in my life, complete with Vermont maple syrup that was made from the trees on the property where we were staying. A friend and member of the Kindred Spirits book club recommended Woodstock as a stop on our trip after NCTE last year, and we used her exact trip itinerary from a trip she’d taken with her daughter in planning our own. While my husband and I were in Woodstock, we took some time to go exploring a few back roads while we were there, and I have some of the setting assigned to places we saw, such as the famous bridge. It’s hard to imagine that a crime like the one in this book could happen there, but where there are humans, there will be crime. This book inspired me to wrap up in a blanket I bought from the Vermont Flannel Company while I was there and to pull up the photos from that amazing trip and add them to the new digital photo frame my daughter sent us for Christmas. Oh, to go back there!
The Kindred Spirits dive into exciting fiction, and this group tends to gravitate toward thrillers. Once we’ve finished reading a book, we plan some sort of adventure to go along with what we have read so that we allow our reading to inspire new discoveries. You can see our reading choices and adventures from 2025 here. We’ll be meeting December 19 to put the first six months of our 2026 list together. I’d like to ask for your favorite book recommendations. Please help us out ~ which books have you read recently that you savored, and what made you fall in love with them? Also, have you ever been part of a reading retreat where everyone reads a few books and then drives an hour or two to a mountain lodge for a weekend to talk about those books, read more books, sit by the fire, eat delicious food, visit a spa, and shop in the stores on the town square? We’ve heard of those retreats and are thinking of trying one sometime this year, so we’re all ears for your most exciting book experiences as we plan a few slices of life.
A street scene of Woodstock, Vermont
My husband sits by the fire of the Woodstock Inn as we wait to eat dinner
My second favorite shop in Woodstock, where I bought our favorite blanket (the bookstore was my favorite)
Ornaments made by Joy, bearing our group name and holding a miniature version of each of the books we’ve read this year
Last night was our first annual Kindred Spirits Book Club Christmas Party, and six ladies celebrated a year of reading 11 novels and one month of daily poetry with dinner and dessert, games, gifts, and laughter. We even chose our first book of 2026 (Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson) as we picked our seats for the movie The Housemaid, which we will see together later this month as a book-related adventure.
Our book club came as a granted wish of one of our reading sisters who had been attending a book club sponsored by one of our community partners when we were grant recipients of an initiative to build literacy in schools and communities. This community partner experienced a change in its leadership when its organizer took a different job, so our book club sister Janette came up with a brilliant idea. She suggested that we pick up the pieces and read the books that were purchased, and then, to preserve the integrity of the grant, to fill the Little Free Libraries with these books once we finished reading them and having our meetings.
At first, we weren’t sure whether a book club would take root, but we took Janette’s idea and extended an invitation in January 2025 to read a book and meet at our local coffee shop a few weeks later to discuss it. We found some universal book club questions and were thrilled when six of us came to talk about it. By the time we finished the first couple of books, we had enough momentum to choose books not provided through the grant to continue the club all year. Fast forward to December, and we’re still going strong.
We were not all diehard readers when we embarked on the journey. A couple of us knew we needed books – – and adventures that are sparked by things we’ve read – – but what we didn’t know is how much we needed each other. We’re a classic example of an eclectic group of women with different reading tastes, in different stages of life, with a range of life experiences. But we’re drawn together by books that unify us and common themes that allow us to share our own perspectives. And when human hearts find the right books and the right space, they bond as readers with a sweet kinship. Like us, they are Kindred Spirits.
This morning, I celebrate a year of reading with Janette, Joy, Jill, Jennifer, and Martina. Here are the books we’ve read in our club this year, in order, along with the adventure we shared (a few of us belong to other reading clubs, but here is our list):
January – The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend
Emerald Chandelier Tea Room Brunch
February – Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
Mexican Restaurant Night
March – The Wedding People by Alison Escape
Cake Tasting
April – The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Airport Dinner with a bag of 3 things we’d bring if we changed identities
May – First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
Played Two Truths and a Lie
June/July – The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Made Indoor S’mores
August – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
All wore green on an outing
September – One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
Shared 9/11 Stories of Survivors and Victims
October – Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
Dinner and Movie Night
November – The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Dinner and Movie Night
December – The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan
Christmas Party
Selected Poems for National Poetry Month
Wrote poetry
(Full Disclosure: Not all of us liked or would recommend all of these books to others – but in true book club spirit, we stayed the course and kept turning the pages).
In our first book of the year, a character was always making tea, so we visited a tea room for a Saturday morning brunch. At our party, we played the Left, Right, Across game with the story below (feel free to modify and use it for your own book club), and each of us took home a mismatched teacup and saucer in the bag that ended up in front of us. We played Mad Libs, had a wrapped book swap, and had a gift exchange as well, and we can’t wait to see what 2026 brings!
Don’t miss the photos of our book club through the year under the story.
A Book Club Christmas Party
It was the evening of the annual Christmas Dinner party as members of the book club arrived and settled in right on time for what was left of the day. Last spring, with books left over from a grant, they stacked their hands right together in a huddled pledge to read across the year. They’d started right away with The Beautiful and the Wild, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, and The Wedding People, which left them all wanting more adventures like tea parties and movie outings and even driving slap across the county to the airport with packed bags. They shared what they’d take with them as they sat across the table after reading The Last Flight. They even read across genres that included poetry. They had some books left, so they dove right straight into First Lie Wins, The God of the Woods – which they read across the summer months – and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, each reader thinking secretly of one or two of the books, “well, geez, that’s one I might have left out of the lineup” right before starting the next books ~ One Tuesday Morning, Regretting You, The Housemaid, and The Book Club Hotel. Eleven books across the span of the year, and here they were right at the table, celebrating all their different tastes in reading while gathering each month to read books they may have left out of their own lives except that they yearned to be right there discussing books together with their reading sisters, appreciating how their reading tastes, though often a mixed and mismatched bag, revealed all those moments of having just the right book at the right time because that’s what books do – they unify. Each realized, across the span of the year, that reading together is just the right medicine for the soul. In the perfect spirit of solidarity, they clinked their cups before heading right back home already dreaming of the next gathering, and as each guest left, they felt right at home in their book club family, where they fit snugly and belonged, as precious and interesting as fine mismatched china.
In the cellar of 1828 Coffee Company, where we hold most of our monthly discussionsKindred Spirits Book Club From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, and JanetteAt the movie Regretting You after reading the book by Colleen HooverChristmas Gifts and mismatched teacups and saucersAt the Emerald Chandelier Tea RoomAt The Emerald Chandelier Tea Room after reading our first book of 2025At our Kindred Spirits Christmas Party, 12/5/2025
On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.
After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.
Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.
We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.
This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.
I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.
It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.
And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.
I never laugh as much as when our book club gets together! The books we read and the times we spend talking about them are a balm for my soul.
People have asked me how we “do” our club, because there are so many ways to structure a book club. First, we decide on a book based on someone’s recommendation. We’ve already picked dates through the end of summer and have marked them on our calendars so we guard our time. We sent out digital invitations so we don’t plan any other meetings by accident. Priorities.
Once we know our book and our next meeting time, we read and try not to talk about it with anyone reading it so we don’t give spoilers. Our regularly scheduled gathering spot is our local coffee shop, where they have all the best coffees, a few food items, and the best downstairs couch circle anywhere in town – the kind of leather couches you slide down deep into and wonder if you’re ever going to be able to get out once you get in. The kind with a big coffee table in the middle so there’s room for mugs and plates and stacks of books. We go there and pull out our general book questions as a discussion guide. Sometimes we use questions designed specifically for a book – – like at our most recent gathering, when I’d forgotten to bring the list of universal book questions. Another group member pulled up a set online that we discussed.
The part so many book clubs don’t “do” that sets our club apart is the action part. Every member of our club has a streak of adventure dwelling in our hearts, so we like to think of something the book inspires us to want to do, and then go do that thing. For example, in The Beautiful and the Wild, one of the characters was always drinking tea. One of our members found a local tea room and went for brunch to try different teas, even trying on all the hats and a pair of gloves, too. In The God of the Woods, the characters ate s’mores, so we met for appetizers at the home of one of our members and made s’mores. Having the adventure part adds to the experience of any book, because we do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do on any normal day of our lives. We stay young.
Our latest book, Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You, was released as a movie this month, so we made it our October selection and met for dinner and a movie. We spent as much time discussing the movie and the differences between the book and screenplay, and we were still talking in the dark theater when the manager came in, turned on the lights, and said he was “surprised” to see us there. He was shutting the place down. We were just glad we didn’t get locked in the movie theater overnight. We imagined the headline with humor and horror: Local School District Employees Earlier Reported Missing Found Locked in Local Theater Overnight.
Our next book is The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. The movie comes out December 19, and of course we all have our Regal apps for movie tickets up and running and have booked the date. We’ve decided to leave after the credits finish rolling – – just in case.
Kindred Spirits From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, Janette
Last year, we started a Central Office book club in our rural Georgia school district. This was Janette’s idea, but she graciously allowed me to help organize its inception. We asked another local book club if we could read their books they were not using, and we gave each title another round of reading before placing these in Little Free Libraries according to the grant provisions with which they were originally purchased. This club has become a sisterhood, and much like my writing group friends, our interactions go beyond the daily water station office talk into what goes on in our lives and how we feel about issues that arise in the books we read. We connect on a deeper level this way.
We’re a cross-section of society, which lends to richer discussion. I’m the oldest. Martina is the youngest. All of us are mothers and wives. Two of us are real sisters (Jill and Joy). Four of us are grandmothers. Two of us are preachers’ kids. We’ve all been through some tough times and bring differing perspectives to our conversations. But what’s most important is that we are all readers, we understand that every book is not going to get five stars but that there is something to take from each, and we embrace our collective voice on womanhood and readership. We’re the Kindred Spirits – and we are aptly named.
Last April, I shared a poem with our group each day during National Poetry Month, and while most were written by well-known poets, one or two were poems that I wrote. They know that writing poetry is what keeps me balanced at all times, but particularly in tough times – of which there have been many lately in my life. When my father died in June, I was sad that he would not be here to see the book I’d been working on for so long come out on Labor Day weekend.
Imagine my surprise when my Kindred Spirit sisters knew I was feeling down and threw an after-lunch dessert party for me and presented me with a poem that they had all written to cheer me up and celebrate me. I was moved to tears as they explained that they had each written two lines, and that the lines appeared in alphabetical order according to their names: Janette, Jennifer, Jill, Joy, and Martina.
I framed it and keep it among my greatest treasures; it means so much to me that in a time when I was grieving, my reading sisters built me up and reminded me that we are all in this together – – and that the tears along the journey can be turned into laughter and joy. We feel it in our local coffee shop on our small town square each month as we sip our brews and talk about the characters we have come to love (and dislike). We feel it at work as we deal with our day to day duties, and we will feel it in the movie theater later this week as we watch our monthly novel come to the big screen: Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You.
I’m not sure where I’d be without my reading group – and my writing groups. Today is a day to celebrate all of you (if you’re reading this, it includes you, too) who make a difference in my life. My glass is raised to you, dear friends, for all that you mean to me. You inspire me, and I appreciate each and every one of you!
Poem written for me by my Kindred Spirits book club
Front: Jill, Janette, Martina; Back: me, Joy (Jennifer is missing)
Books We’ve Read in our Club So Far:
The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
The Wedding People by Allison Espach
One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
God of the Woods by Liz Moore
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
and
Selected Poems-a-Day for National Poetry Month
Book Club Haiku
we’re always on the
lookout for our next great read
….any suggestions?
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting Slice of Life
This month, I’m sharing some of Dad’s conversations in his final days, and in one of them that you can hear at the bottom of this post, he revealed a surprising thought about how we feel about folks from time to time. His revelation reminded me of a poem that I wrote recently for a small group of women in one of my writing circles.
My Stafford Challenge group meets the first Monday of each month by Zoom to chat and write together, and we’re a group of women who enjoy reading as much as writing. I’ve been writing a form each month called Gift Basket writing, where I choose three things I’d give a person in a gift basket for that month. This one is dedicated especially to my Stafford Writing Group sisters – Barb Edler of Iowa, Glenda Funk of Idaho, and Denise Krebs of California. At the time I wrote this, I’d recently stumbled across a book club I’d love to join, even for the name alone, and there is actually a summer camp in Maine for its readers – this is a real thing. My dream summer is going to this book club’s summer camp, and I’ve added it to the bucket list.
Bad Bitch Book Club
if I were giving you
a gift basket
I’d make it a
Bad Bitch gift basket
to welcome the storms
of the world~
you’d receive
a t-shirt that says
BAD BITCH BOOK CLUB
complete with
a membership to
the Bad Bitch Book Club
(yes ~ it’s a real thing
with its own dot com)
and a mirror
so you’ll always
see the
baddest of the kick-ass bad
right in the palm of your hand~
knowing your Bad Bitch sisters
have your back!
It’s okay to have a BB attitude sometimes……even my preacher Dad in his final days confessed that there are times we are all a little bit badass. You can listen here:
Last night’s book discussion in Dr. Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind Book Group was Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, a reader, or any combination of those roles, you would likely find strong points of identifying with the author – perhaps both agreeing and disagreeing with ideas even in the same chapter!
Each month, I enjoy the lively discussions of this group. We gather and bring a passage to discuss on our Zoom call. Denise Krebs of California led us this evening. Mo Daley of Illinois liked the quiet eye – the observant part of the reader that takes in details, and Sarah Donovan of Oklahoma liked the idea of cognitive patience – – attending with consciousness and attention to a rhythm that allows insights to unfold. What resonated most with me were the fostering of empathy and refining of critical thinking skills as readers use their eyes to take in whole new worlds through words. Every few pages, I’d marked a passage and stuck a Post-It bookmark tab on the side of the page to flag my favorite parts.
So much of our brain is active when we are reading – it’s performing miracles we don’t even realize are happening, lighting up the night sky during a thunderstorm with all of its lightning sparks and flashes.
To readers everywhere: pick up a book and savor the magic of reading. You are blessed to be able to make sense of print, to consider and contemplate it, to meditate on the ideas and to add layers of new perspective, and yes – even to revise your position because a book presents a case you may have never considered.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my reading choices these past few weeks. I started the year with the goal of reading around the USA with The Book Girls, and I made it three and a half months before rethinking my commitment to reading books that I thought might be more about particular places. I’ve never had trouble abandoning a book, and I’ve never had trouble rereading one again and again and again.
Reading Around the USA seemed fun – like it was going to be an adventure – but in many cases, I found that the recommended books hardly mentioned place, and when I read to learn about a place, I thrive on rich descriptions that take me to settings that appeal to all five senses like I felt when I was walking the streets of Mitford Village with Jan Karon. What others find to be amazing bestsellers not to be missed, I often find blah at best, reading the obscure books on the shelf and finding that they outshine the popular books where my taste is concerned.
I’m looking forward to a book club coming this summer through Ethicalela.com, which will feature a variety of professional books, poetry, and fiction. My reading goal will shift toward reading books with the people I connect with and write with each month. We’ll gather by Zoom and discuss our reading. The hosts and monthly books will be announced in June.
I thought back this week over the books I enjoyed as a young child, and these were the top ten as I remember them, in no particular order beyond 1-4, but 1-4 are solidly in order of preference. These are the books that shaped me as I became a reader, the ones that had me wanting to write so much that I began writing the names of the color crayons in the covers of my books by looking at the letters on the crayon wrapper. Perhaps you also loved some of these.
10. Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
9. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
8. A Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith
7. Queenie Peavy by Robert Burch
6. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
5. Happiness Is by Charles M. Schultz
4. Childcraft Volume 2: Stories and Fables
3. Tibor Gergely’s Great Big Book of Bedtime Stories
2. A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes
Please share your favorite childhood books and a book you’d recommend that you’ve read recently in the comments. Currently, I’m reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart.
Common Threads 