Natalie Shipman is a member and co-founder of As the Page Turns from Buffalo, NY. This small group gives new meaning to the word "efficient" by meeting once a month at work during their 15-minute breaks. Read on to learn more about their reading tastes, how they use their brief gatherings to relieve stress from their hectic jobs and the cute way they celebrated their first anniversary.

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

A: Yes. As the Page Turns, formed in April 2004.

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

A: Currently five members --- three women, two men. Our ages range from early 30s to mid-40s.

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

A: We meet once a month at work.

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

A: When we first started the book club we ate together in the cafeteria, but now we just meet and no one eats.

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

A: Natalie Shipman, the co-founder of the group, opens discussion and then everyone gets a turn to share their thoughts. We do not use book guides, and our discussions have been interesting and lively.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: We read mainly fiction, i.e. James Patterson, Mitch Albom and Margaret Truman, but we are open to any book and welcome all.

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 pick a book for the following month at the end of each meeting. Each person gets a turn to choose, so it's never one-sided.

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

A: Some of the best books we've read were The Darkest Child, The Honeymoon and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: We all work together and just do a lot of laughing to relieve the stress of a very demanding job.

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

A: Anybody can form a book club, anytime and anywhere. Just do it.

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

A: A former member refused to read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code for religious reasons, so we had to scrounge around for another book to read that month.

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

A: We all work at a bank and meet at the top of the escalators on our break for 15 minutes. You would be surprised at how much can be discussed in that short time. We meet like this because we no longer are a group of over 15 people, like when we first started. I also keep a notebook of all the books we read with all the members' comments/things we discussed. On our first-year anniversary we had a cake made with photos of all books read in the first year.

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