Friendship forged as group shares reading pleasure

Barbara Hollands speaks to Judy McKenzie

When was your book club founded and how did you name it? We started in 1997. At our first meeting we talked about book clubs that required the hostess to prepare a three-course meal and we definitely did not want to do that. So we called it the Mellow Book Club and swore to have nothing more than snacks from Woolies and the odd decadent cake.

How many members are there? There are 11 of us – four are original members from when we started. We received a lot of objections from our spouses that it was for women only, so they decided to start another book club – the Mellow Fellows – which is still going strong!

How often and where do you meet? We meet once a month, on a roster basis so each of us hosts once a year.

How much do you spend on books per month? We try and get three to four books a month, so this could be up to R500. We don‘t make monthly contributions and simply buy the books when it is our turn. We also throw in books that we have read and enjoyed from other sources.

Are your book discussions and reviews quite serious? Not serious in a very intellectual sense. We talk more about what the book meant to us and how it relates to other books and movies. We are all there for reading for pleasure and we get good recommendations for reading from the group.

What were the Mellow Book Club‘s most popular books in 2008? Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimanda Ngozi Adichie), Q & A (Vikas Swarup), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) and On Chesil Beach and Black Dogs (both by Ian McEwan). My personal favourite was The Story of Katie Makanya (Margaret McCord).

Any books that didn‘t live up to the hype? Some of the South African ones needed a good edit. We are also tired of Joanne Harris and some Alexander McCall Smith books.

Has there been a book that prompted heated discussion? We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver) was very controversial. Our readers also found that Engleby by Sebastian Faulks was hard to stomach as he was such an unattractive character.

Besides being a forum for book talk, do you discuss other matters? We have been meeting once a month for years now so we really do get an idea of what is going on in each other‘s lives and we tend to share the big events. We learn from each other about handling things, from choosing schools for our kids to coping with teenagers, our work, travel and holiday plans, ill health of our parents and families, and arranging weddings and funerals. We support each other‘s causes.

Life