A recent little development in my life is the formation of and my participation in a book club.

I know you all will find it hard to believe that I teach English and yet my reading for fun is so dismal. However, I usually get caught up in living, eating, parenting, working, and all that other jazz before I'm able to sit and read a good book. I do sneak them in occasionally, though.

Anyway, two theater friends and I decided during play practice about a month ago to form a book club. Because: we like to read and we like to talk about what we read and we like to socialize while we talk about what we read.

We decided on an interesting format. We meet in two weeks' time to discuss the book, but the catch was, we were only to read HALF of the book. Then we could discuss theories and ideas up to that point. In another two weeks, we would meet again to discuss the rest of the book. It's clever, actually, reading half the book, talking about it, then reading the rest.

Our first choice was "Eragon." Not one of the three of us had read it, we'd all seen the movie, and it seemed a good place to start. So off we went (the book is BLAH, lots of flaws, but that's neither here nor there). We had our second meeting last night...so the book is done.

And it was so much fun! We had excellent book conversation, and great other-topic conversation otherwise. I feel like for the first time since we moved here that I've found girlfriends I have lots in common with and enjoying being with.

So...the next book "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman.