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The members of ReadingGroupGuides.com contributor Heather Johnson's book club ended 2008 with a gift exchange that involved "stealing." And for their first meeting of 2009, they're planning to try something new...


My book club had our annual Christmas party a few weeks ago. In addition to serving lots of fun holiday food, we also did book reports and a book swap. Book reports are our version of a "free read" month. Each gal can read any book she likes, provided that she gives a brief report of it at the meeting. Most of us read Christmas titles but a few chose other topics.

After the reports we did a wrapped book swap, the kind where you get to steal if someone has a better book than you. It was lots of fun! Here are a few of the books that got the most attention (for one reason or another):

Most Unique Title:
The Official Guide to Christmas in the South (Or, If You Can't Fry It, Spray Paint It Gold) by David C. Barnette --- read by a gal who is missing her Southern home

Strangest Pick for Christmastime:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley --- the gal who picked this one is revisiting her high school reading assignments

Best Wrapping Job:
The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas Carlton Abrams --- wrapped up in a lingerie box filled with leopard print tissue paper

Most Popular (aka, The Book Stolen the Most Times):
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz --- no one had read this yet but everyone wants to --- I think four different people had their hands on this book!

I hope you all enjoyed your book club holiday festivities as much as we did. Up next for us is Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies: Stories. This is our first experience with short stories, and I can't wait to see how the meeting goes.

---Heather Johnson