*Book Club Review* Deadly Chapters and Cafes Book Club

 This has been an eventful day for me so far, but not in a bad way. Got up early (for a Saturday at least) for Fantasy Book Club at 11. I was up early enough that I folded three weeks worth of laundry before I even needed to leave for book club. Then after the book club meeting, my husband and I got our taxes done. We have the best lady at H&R Block (she's wicked fast at it), but to see her for our taxes, we have to go on base. Fortunately my husband's job and veteran status gives us that option. Our return is very sad because we're in a grown up tax bracket, but we are getting a return. 

Then I came home, did a short cardio workout (I plan on doing another workout a bit later, but wanted to get some of my self-imposed administrative work done first), created the events for three months worth of book club meetings in two groups, and now we're here. And that means it's time to talk about another book club. 

Today we are focusing on the third of the thriller/mystery specific book clubs that I am a member of in the Springs (that made the list. There is also a Final Girls Book Club, but much like Shelf-Care, I haven't been able to make it to a meeting. The reason Shelf Care made the bracket and Final Girls didn't is the times for Final Girls meetings seem to have more conflicts, so I'm less likely to be able to attend). Although this is the third thriller group I joined, it's actually the first one to exist (to my knowledge). If it weren't for the fact that these groups in general are widely attended (with almost no overlap in attendees beyond me), I'd feel like a bit of ass for having started one.  The ladies who run the other groups are far better organized than I am. But there is clearly room for multiple, and they all meet on different days and at different times.

Deadly Chapters and Cafes is largely a democracy when it comes to book choices. We usually have a theme for the month picked for us (such as snowy setting for December, etc), and then anyone in the group can make suggestions that are on theme. Once all the suggestions are in, we vote. We have books picked a couple months out typically (which is good because thriller books are the hardest to get at the library it seems, without facing a decently long wait). I think we sometimes vote on the next meeting location, but I believe that is usually decided by Paula, who runs the group. Sometimes I like just being told where to be though, and not having to make choices. And since this group usually meets at coffee shops and I don't really drink coffee, it's much easier when they just tell me where to go. 

You would think that being in four different thriller book clubs, these would be the groups that see the most book selection overlap, because they're drawing from just one genre. You would also be very wrong. So far, there has not been a single book that was picked for more than one of these groups, within this genre set. Meanwhile, the big Colorado Springs Book Club, Book Hangout Book Club, and Fountain Book Club have all had several books overlap between the three, and I classify all of them as generic book clubs. If you love thrillers and want to talk about all the thrillers, but you don't want to repeat books between clubs, you can rest fairly assured that you won't see a lot of overlap in the local thriller groups as they stand right now. 

Some of my favorite reads from this group include The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James, They Never Learn by Layne Fargo, and Survive the Night by Riley Sager. 

Will you be joining us for a coffee and chat any time soon? - Katie 

*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