About Book Night

The inspiration for Book Night?  Outing myself as a gossip mag addict. It wasn’t as if I was always like this. Before parenthood, I was quite bookish. My brain could cope with twisted plot lines, three-dimensional characters and words of multi-syllables. Two babies later and my most challenging read was Now magazine.

I realised the error of my ways when quizzing friends over dinner, “What do you think of the Katie Price and Peter Andre split?”  I started a conversation (actually, more like a monologue) that exposed my in-depth knowledge of their marriage implosion.

At that point, I knew my love affair with gossip mags needed to be over: “It’s not you, it’s me…” I whispered to my stack of Heat, Now, New! and Closer magazines as I lowered them gently into the recycling basket (and concealed them beneath a copy of New Scientist, lest passers-by should judge).

I made a decision:  to look for a more suitable reading match for my intellect before my brain became a mulch capable of reading nothing more perceptive than Goat and Donkey in Strawberry Sunglasses(though a good book, in truth). It was something I’d resolved to do before and failed, so how could I make sure that this time I would succeed?  

I concluded that I needed to recruit Book Buddies: the human equivalent of a mighty boot up the derriere.  I hatched a plan to arrange a monthly get together to discuss a book we’d all read.  That way, I would simply HAVE to read it. And, to kill two birds with one stone, the evenings might resurrect my tragic social life. With the aid of wine and nibbles, this could actually be FUN.