The Two Person Book Club

My husband and I have started something interesting. I recommend it.

It happened almost by accident. My Husband had downloaded a book on tape, Steig Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” for a road trip. I finished my book while he was away and started to read the same book. When he came back it turned out we were in about the same spot in the book, but he was a bit ahead of me. Since I read at lunchtime while the kids eat, and Josh listens to his book on tape while driving to different clients all day, we kept going like this. Every day he would come home and we would check which part of the book we had gotten to. Since the Husband stayed a little ahead of me I could always talk about the info I just learned and we could share notes on what we thought and speculate on where the book was going. We did the same with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (both of us agreed it’s our fave of the trilogy).

Next we read Life of Pi in the same way. Incredible book, by the way. I am now obsessed with Bengal Tigers. Anyway, this book I couldn’t put down and read it at lunch and in the bath and while making dinner and whenever the kids were distracted. So of course I finished it before Josh did, which meant I waited til he was done and we talked about it. He’d seen the movie but we were afraid the movie missed some stuff in the book and I would accidentally wreck stuff coming up so we waited.

I recommend this method of bonding! With a Husband/Wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, best friend. If one of you hates reading or drives a lot, they could do the book on tape method. Even if they only listen to it on the drive to and from work that would be a suitable plan (and it saves you from thesamesongevery20minutesradio). The other person could take a bit of time each day, either at lunch time or before bed, to read the same book. Or you could both use the book on tape, or both read for a half hour a day….It’s a super flexible plan. And you don’t have to live in the same city to do this. Even if you don’t have time for a phone call every day or hate the phone like I do (too many call center jobs!), you could always check in every day with a text and compare notes. It’s the daily comparing of your take of what happened in the book that is the best part of all of this. And the speculating together on the ending.

And it’s really fun! We only really intended to do this for one book! And even then it was only cuz my fishbowl brain forgot he was listening to that particular book. But three books in and we don’t intend for it to end.

Scour your local library or used book stores people! Don’t buy a new book every time if you can help it. Save some trees this way. Libraries are an amazing resource for this. Or if you have a reader of some kind I am sure you can download or buy it. I don’t have one so just guessing on how those work. Can’t you even rent from the library on those things?

I’d love to hear if you try this and if it worked for you. Or if you know someone who would love this idea, forward them my blog post or spread the word!

 

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