Book Club in a Bag

Book Club in a Bag

Like I’ve mentioned before, my 100 People Project is not about the 100 People, it’s about the 100 People. (Did I get the emphasis on the right syllable?).  I also think it’s important that as many of the 100 as possible are people I love on and connect with again and again.  One super easy group I do this with is my book club.

I wrote about How to Host a Book Club here, so I won’t go into all those specifics here, especially because in January, the book club definitely looked different.  The state of Illinois was pretty shut down for another COVID surge and since January in Illinois is pretty frigid, we were Zooming.  And since Zooming is kinda stinky, we needed to add a little razzle-dazzle.  Enter: Book Club in a Bag.

I don’t think that our book club is terribly unique in that there is very little actual book-talking at our meetings.  Instead, there’s a lot of laughing, talking about everyday life, and snacking.  So much delicious snacking.  To make sure we could replicate this while at home, we devised a plan to release 5 Book Club Bags into the wild filled with snacks and drinks.  Here’s how it worked:

Step One: Receive bag.  Enjoy refreshments during book club.

Step Two: Cross your name off the included list.

Step Three: Prior to next book club, select a book club member still on the list.  Refill the bag with a treat you think she’d enjoy and deliver.

With five bags in rotation and 14 book clubbers, in 14 weeks, everyone would give and receive 5 treats.  And hopefully, in 14 weeks, pandemical life would look different.

It wasn’t perfect, one night Colleen received 4 bags and they pretty much fizzled out by March, but they were always intended to be a short-term solution, and hey, short-term solutions are still solutions, right?

The fourteen of them finished off my January with 43 down and 57 to go!