Heather Wheeler of Auckland, New Zealand met most of her fellow book club members when their children attended the same local school. Now, 25 years later, the One Tree Hill Book Club is still going strong with 12 members. Read on to find out more about what has kept them together all this time, as well as what has worked so well for them over the past two and a half decades.

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

A: We are the One Tree Hill book club. Most of us have been together for 25 years. We started as a group who lived in the same area and whose children were attending the local school or preschool.

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

A: We have 12 members. We are all women and now we are in our 50s and early 60s.

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

A: We meet once a month in members' houses.

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

A: We have tea and cake provided by the hostess of the month. We have dinner at home before the meeting.

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

A: The hostess leads the discussion. We began by reading books provided by a national book group that offered 12 copies of a book and discussion notes. We did this for 15 years and then decided to organize it ourselves. We have used the general discussion guide notes on this website.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: We read mostly current fiction, but we occasionally read classics or nonfiction. We have read one or two award-winning children's books. We decided many years ago not to read science fiction, romance or thrillers.

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: We try and choose books 2 or 3 months in advance, especially if we are to read a recently published book.

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

A: Over the years, we have read some wonderful books, but two that provided the liveliest discussions were Industry of Souls by Martin Booth and Portrait of a Marriage, a book about Vita Sackville-West that was written by her son.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: We have known each other so long that this is not a problem. We have watched each others' families grow up and are now beginning to see grandchildren. We are never at a loss for things to talk about if the book-of-the-month discussion dries up.

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

A: Try and have a few standard questions on hand to bring the discussion to order. Start by quickly going around the group to let everyone initially have a couple of minutes of talk without interruption. Try and let only one person talk at a time when discussing the book (really hard this one).

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

A: Each month the hostess provides two new books to go into our "library." Members also provide books that they have enjoyed and wish to share. This is a box on wheels that is brought to each meeting by the hostess from the previous month. This gets so full we regularly have to take back our own books to make room for more. We keep a book in which we record our borrowings.

Q: Is there anything else unique or noteworthy about your group that you would like to share?

A: I think that we have a great record of just being together. Occasionally, we lose a member due to family or work commitments. We fill the space with women who we think will fit in with the group and love books. We all travel extensively and it is rare to have a meeting when there is not at least one of our group in Europe or the UK. All of us travel internationally each year.

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