When a respected colleague was leaving my workplace, I asked him how we could keep in touch. Because I enjoyed hearing about the books he had read or was reading (there were always many interesting titles on the go at once) I asked him about the book club he belonged to and if I could join.

He told me that he no longer went to that book club because two of the members were meeting there clandestinely to pursue their romantic interest in each other, rather than to talk about the book.

I told my colleague that that would never happen to us because for us it was All About the Book.

We decided to form our own book club and the first meeting was held in August 2015.

We began by hosting the meeting in a variety of venues in town so that we could try out new eating places but these were frequently noisy, an inconvenient drive for some members and we were likely to be pursued by the venue’s manager for a room hire fee if they got a wiff that we were holding a regular book club meeting.

Fortunately, one of the members offered her apartment to save herself the problem of driving at night across town and we began to meet there very comfortably each month for which we were very grateful.

Chris Walker 2024