Andrea Harper began her book club in Londonderry, NH in the fall of 2005. In this interview, Andrea explains how diverse personalities within the group as well as the recent addition of a male’s perspective have led to livelier discussions. She also offers an amusing anecdote in which she had to improvise a meeting after most of the members canceled at the last minute.

Q: Does your group have a name and/or a theme? How long has your group been in existence?

A: We do not have a name. We have been in existence since the fall of 2005.

Q: How many members do you have? How many men, how many women? What age are most of your members?

A: We have 10 members --- nine women and one man. Most of our members are in their 40s and 50s.

Q: How often do you meet? Where do you meet?

A: We meet about once every six weeks. Most of the time we hold meetings at one of our houses, but sometimes we go out to restaurants.

Q: Do you eat at your meetings? What do you eat? Who brings the food?

A: Yes. Most of the time we just have sweets and wine. Different members and whoever hosts the meeting usually bring the food.

Q: Who leads the discussion? Do you use reading group guides?

A: I usually lead the discussion. I started the group and most members need someone else to lead. When available, we will use reading group guides.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: All genres.

Q: How do you choose your books? Do you choose one new book at each meeting, or do you choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time?  

A: Everyone is encouraged to bring book recommendations to the meetings and we choose from those. We choose a new book at each meeting.

Q: What were some of the best discussions or favorite books the group read?

A: Some of the books we have recently enjoyed are Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik, The Double Bind and The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian and Light on Snow by Anita Shreve.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: I try to present interesting facts about the book or author or subject matter in the book. We have read books that we knew were going to be movies so we could go see them together.

Q: What advice would you give to other reading groups?

A: The more diverse the personalities in your group the better! It makes for interesting conversation. We recently had a man join our group, and it has been great to get his point of view on things!

Q: Do you have any horror stories, amusing anecdotes, or other special tales to tell?

A: Most of my stories are about members who came to the meeting and had not read the book, but left the discussion wanting to go home and read. My only horror story would be about a meeting that everyone blew off at the last minute and I had one (new) member show up to discuss. I called a neighbor who I knew had read the book and begged her to join us for a glass of wine!

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