Sheri Winkelman of Portland, Oregon shares a great deal of information about her book club. Although the demographics of her fellow members vary, they all have a good sense of humor and respect one another’s opinions. Read on to learn about their most memorable discussion, their ambitious plans for the future, and the horror story that will send chills up your spine.

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

A: A name seems like such a good idea. Why haven't we thought of it? Probably because we always have so many things to talk about that it's just never come up. One member calls us The Radical Chic when she calls me on the telephone. We had our first meeting in September of 2003.

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

A: Although we found it difficult, we decided to hold the group to 10 people. Actually, I'm the only one who's ever met one member of our group. Interesting, huh? She's this really cool retired federal judge who lives in Arizona but has a summer place across the street from me. She had to return home before our first meeting last year and was not able to come this summer. Somehow we just all accept that she's a part of the group; she gets all our e-mail messages and knows the whole sordid story of the guy originally in our group who turned out to be a wife murderer --- no kidding! More about that later…

As for ages, we range from the early 30s to 60s. Most of us are old enough to know better.

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

A: We meet once a month in members’ homes. We'd probably get kicked out of restaurants.

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

A: Do we eat? Is the Pope Catholic? It is easy to get wonderful takeout in our neighborhood. Since all but a couple of us have careers (physician, financial advisor, chief of information technology, art dealer, yoga instructor, ESL teacher, realtor, etc.), it's been easier to buy food rather than cook it ourselves. However, in December we will be having our second Italian Christmas dinner at a member's home. She prepares a feast for us. We also often have food that relates in some way to the book we're reading. When we read a book about Vietnam, for instance, we also had Vietnamese food and some members wore dresses from that country.

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

A: As usually happens, the cream rises to the top. In this case, our Stanford English grad spontaneously took on the discussion leader's role. Your website is her favorite place to get discussion questions and she always works to keep us on track.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: We read fiction and nonfiction and are keeping a journal of our choices. Every month we paste a copy of the book's cover on the left page, along with where we met and what kind of meal we had. On the right side we write our comments and award up to 4 stars each. We usually read books available in paperback that are favorites or something that captures the imagination. I think each of us tried to find a combination of good writing and thought-provoking topics.

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: In alphabetical order each member gets to choose a book, so it's easy to know when your turn is coming. I love this method because the less vocal women don't have to compete with us "high talkers"; everyone knows they'll get a turn. When we meet next week, for instance, the December person will announce her book choice. By the next morning, I will have researched prices on Amazon and Powell's (since most of us live just down the street from Powell's in Portland, Oregon, we're pretty loyal to it) and will have sent a message to everyone with prices and information about next month's meeting in case not everyone was present the night before.

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

A: I can only really speak for myself, but I would guess I'm not alone in remembering best the times when the book related to our personal experiences. A tremendous amount of trust has been created through the process of slowly divulging who we are. For example, one person chose Bringing Down the House, a book about gambling. Although I didn't enjoy the book, the discussion about how gambling had affected members' families was fascinating. It was a privilege to be entrusted with sensitive information. Isn't it interesting how easy it is to care for people when they let themselves be vulnerable?

Perhaps our most memorable discussion was prompted by reading The Bitch in the House. Although we are of different ages, not all have children, two are lesbians, some are married and some are not, we are all women who resonated with the essays in the book. After that meeting, because of the personal stories we shared, I felt we were going to "be there" for each other through thick and thin.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: Wine!

On election night most of the gals came to my house to celebrate together if Kerry won and cry on each other's shoulders if he didn't. My daughters and some of their friends also attended. One of my daughters told me later that a 30-something guy who attended asked if all women start to laugh really loud as they get older. He was raised by a quiet and shy Japanese single mother, so what did he know? My daughter told him she didn't know about women in general but that all of her mom's friends shriek. It's true; despite the fact that the election results were depressing, we hooted and hollered just as much as ever.

Also, we're planning a nude calendar. Each of us will choose books that we relate to and create a setting around a theme. Since I love to cook and weigh too much (I prefer to think that I "blossomed"), I'm going to look for a cookbook on rolls and buns. With a chef's hat and a cookbook strategically placed, what else could I possibly need? If we actually follow through with this, if we decide to be bold and let anyone else see it, if we are persuaded to sell it, then I'm sure the proceeds would be given to charity. That's a lot of ifs, eh?

Plus, half of our group just got back from Bali. The rest of us went to England, Scandinavia, Alaska and the Inland Passage, Brazil, and Eastern Europe. We're looking for someplace to go together next year.

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

A: Based on our group, I would say that similar ages, levels of education, marital status, etc. (the usual demographics) matter less than (1) having people who innately understand that "no two people read the same book" and who accept each other's interpretations of what they read, (2) the ability to laugh, particularly at oneself, and (3) both the willingness to trust others and being trustworthy ourselves.

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

A: Well, we definitely have a horror story, although I'd have to say we also laughed a lot about it, particularly when we were first doing some sleuthing. In the beginning I invited another gal who lives on the same floor of my condominium. The man who lived between us came out of his unit while we were talking and, after listening to our conversation, asked if he could join the group. Since I always tend toward inclusiveness and the group was just starting, I said "sure." At our first meeting the next month it was pretty clear that he was only there because he was attracted to the gal from down the hall. However, she knew how to handle him and nobody felt they had the right to tell him to get lost.

Well, although it's really hard to make a long story short, we ended up finding out that he was an attorney who had murdered his wife in the 1990s in Florida, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, got out on a technicality, advertised his legal services to convicts and their families by saying he had beat the system and he could help them do the same, then took over $140,000 and did nothing for them, was caught and convicted in May of 2003, jumped bail before sentencing, assumed a dead man's identity after conning his widow out of $30,000, and fled to Portland where, as the Oregonian newspaper said, he lived the high life in a posh condo in the Pearl District.

How was he finally caught? By the second and third meetings of our book group, we were starting to feel that things weren't "adding up." We started investigating him and confronted him with some lies he had told to members of the book group. Although we couldn't get the FBI or Portland Police interested, the U.S. Marshalls finally tracked him down and arrested him in February of this year. It was only when I was being interviewed by one of the Marshalls that I was told of his criminal past. In addition to serving his sentence for defrauding prison families, he falsely accused a Catholic priest of molestation and is now back in Portland awaiting trial later this month on 18 charges.

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

A: You mean besides the wife murderer, nude calendar, and general revelry? No, not much. Although partially as a result of the "aka Jeff" experience (see above), three of us have decided to attend personal investigation school. I'm retired and the other two have enough free time to devote to attending school and working toward getting licenses. We've decided to call our firm Good Cause Investigations because we would only accept cases we felt passionate about. Since making money would not be the object, we would be able to, for example, help single moms track down deadbeat dads (or vice versa) and, in general, help people with little money seek justice.

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