After we’ve hosted the Read With Us Zoom meet-up and ended the discussions on our blogs, Bonny and Carole and I take turns writing some sort of wrap-up post to . . . y’know . . . tie everything up with a neat little bow when we finish a book and before we announce our NEXT Read With Us selection (which will be January 20 if you’re interested). This go-round? You get the wrap-up from me. Which is always a bit . . . iffy. Because I serve as the moderator for the Zoom discussions, I have a hard time leading the discussion AND taking notes for a wrap-up, so I often lose the thread afterward. Here’s what I’ve got for you, wrap-up-wise, about the book/our Zoom this time around . . .

Sixteen of us joined together on Zoom for a lively discussion of Karen Russell’s The Antidote, a highly engaging and challenging novel. While a few Read With Us readers really didn’t care for the book at all (one may even have used the word “hated” when explaining why she didn’t finish reading it), most of us liked the book at least a little bit, and some of us loved the book. (In a book group discussion, it’s usually much more interesting if there is a range of opinions about the book. It’s hardest to have a good discussion about a book if everyone loves it.) I think all of us left the discussion with at least one new idea or connection about the book, which is a big book group WIN to me.

I can also tell you that, as a group, we have strong Thoughts and Opinions about Winter! We usually start the Zooms off with some sort of ice breaker question, and this time I asked everyone to name the ONE thing they hate most about winter. What do we hate? Well . . . freezing rain for sure. Also rain-on-top-of-snow, cold winds/the wind chill, cold feet, fingers splitting and not healing (although it sounds like super glue provides a temporary respite), neighbors who don’t shovel their sidewalks (so the snow mashes into ice that lasts all season), stepping in pools of melted snow on the floor (and then needing to go find new socks), ice of all types, inversions, winter not adhering to the boundaries of the season (those freeze/thaw fluctuations do wear thin), having to go outside at all (anywhere). And did I mention freezing rain?

After that ice-breaker, though, it was off-to-the races with an engaging discussion of what we liked – and what we didn’t like – about the book, what confused us, why we think the author may have done this or that, how we pictured the prairie witch’s ear horn, and what ABOUT that scarecrow anyway! (Very interesting book. Very interesting discussion.)

The Antidote was our 25th Read With Us book. TWENTY-FIVE books! We read 4 books/year, so that means . . . we’re now into our 7th year. This just kinda blows me away! I know we didn’t have Zooms at first, just blog-based discussions (the Zoom thing was something we tried during the pandemic, and it . . . worked well enough that we just kept doing it). I think the Zooms are maybe the best thing about Read With Us. Over the years we’ve become . . . a Book Group. Like . . . a real Book Group. Even though we live all over the country, and even though we can’t always make it to all the meet-ups, and even though some of us can’t remember how we even learned about Read With Us in the first place, and even though this is a total web-based, virtual Thing . . . here we are! A group . . . Connecting. Sharing. Learning. Supporting.

And right now, in These Times, don’t we NEED that?
A little togetherness with blog (and blog-adjacent) friends. A GROUP of us. Talking about books. (And maybe what we hate about winter.) Laughing together. Recommending books to each other.

Thank you.
For Read(ing) With Us.
And for being here – together – with us.

(And if you haven’t joined in the Zooms yet, maybe consider it. We’d love to have you  join us.)