#2456 thankful for the book club

Tonight I am grateful for Ekpe Udoh and #EkpesBookClub. I've been reading with this fun group for nearly two years. We meet on Twitter most of the time. We've had a couple of Zoom meetings this year, and in previous years, we have met in person along with the author of the book we read at that time, which were called Author Talks. Because of the Author Talks, I've had a chance to meet other members of the club in real life. It's made a difference to me because now when I see their tweets, I have a real face to put with the words. 

We had a Twitter meeting tonight. We are currently reading a thriller, Verity. We will finish this book with next week's discussion, making this a two-week read. Ekpe is pushing to read 15 books with the club this year. Verity is book number 12. 

There's kind of a pattern in the discussions. The first week we talk about what we think will happen (whether the book is a thriller or not). I am not a reader who thinks like that. I form opinions about the characters, but I rarely speculate about what might happen or if a character is a bad guy masquerading as a good guy. I am constantly amused by how the club thinks and the plot lines they come up with. Do all readers wonder what will happen or are more people are like me and just float along in the narration of the book, being surprised or annoyed or pleased with how it plays out? This is probably why I am not a very good fiction writer; I haven't come up with a plot and twists.

Really, I'm not just grateful to and for Ekpe. I'm grateful to the whole group of readers who share their thoughts and GIFs and comments. Sometimes we veer from discussing the book to talk about other stuff. Tonight we talked about the jalapeno and cranberry dip from Costco, for example.  (It's tasty, by the way. I had it last year at Christmas. I don't know if I'll get it for us because the container is Costco sized and I don't know if we need that much dip hanging around for the three of us.)

See, I just veered. I guess that's my cue to wrap up this post and get back to Verity.