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The first rule of book club is not to talk about book club – wait, wrong club! All jokes aside, when I started attending Narrative Bookstore’s Book Club, I had no idea how fulfilling the adventure would be.
The first book club I attended was on fiction in March. There are two different book clubs based on the genres fiction and romance, with a new fantasy book club beginning in July.
The book being read was The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young, a stand-alone mystery novel about a young woman who risks everything to end her family’s curse. There’s time travel, mystery and love, all of which are prime book club material.
Being an English literature major in college and avid book reader, discussing books is nothing new to me. However, I was extremely nervous to go.
I chose March’s book club to be my first because the book was already on my “to be read” list. And Adrienne Young is one of my favorite authors, whose works I have read since her debut.
The nerves came from not knowing anyone there. I had met Brooke Adams, owner of Narrative Bookstore in Murphy, a time or two, but I was really going in blind and without a friend.
Once I got there, however, the atmosphere was inviting. I didn’t feel totally alone when I saw others sitting in white folding chairs, holding their copy of the book.
We went around the room and introduced ourselves, then dove into book discussion. By the end, I had convinced Brooke’s dad, Russell, to read Adrienne Young’s other novel, Fable, and even made a few new friends who I found shared common interests.
I met Billie Cook, cosmetologist at Mountain Barbershop in Murphy, who is an avid reader with a rabbit named Bobby, who has a taste for good literature.
Always with a giant bag of books in hand, Billie usually gives her recent reads to book club attendees in order to save them from her rabbit. It’s becoming a tradition to go to book club and see which books Bobby the rabbit recommends because if you get a book without a cover, it’s a solid five-star read.
Over the last few months, book club has read a thriller with undercover spies, a murder mystery with an unreliable narrator, and a historical fiction where the main character was a yellow house. It has been an adventure in not only reading, but finding new people to share thoughts and ideas with.
Details: Visit the Narrative Book Store’s Facebook page to see what’s being read and when the next meeting will happen.
Stacy Van Buskirk is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Email her at segv2014@gmail.com.