September 2024 Spotlight: The Mission Valley YMCA Book Club
Our September 2024 Spotlight have been meeting for over 2 years!
Our book club was created as an offering of the Y Active Adults (55+) program at the YMCA Mission Valley branch in San Diego. The club has been meeting for 2+ years and is open to all active adult members of the Y. We currently have 13 members who attend regularly and share a love of books and life! While we only met because of our Y connection, we now consider ourselves friends. We recently celebrated one member’s birthday with a delicious cake, and this led to the idea of the discussion leader for the month bringing a snack to the meeting. As one member recently commented, “this is such a terrific group of smart and interesting women and readers.” (We would happily welcome men to our group, but none has yet chosen to join us.)
We select books for a year at a time based on members’ suggestions and then a written vote. Our monthly Friday morning meetings are held in a conference room at the Mission Valley Y, as depicted in the photo. One member volunteers to lead the discussion and shares information about the author and various aspects of the book. Our discussions are lively and spirited, and we often enjoy sharing personal experiences that relate to the book and its themes. We have read several books that have been made into movies (e.g., Killers of the Flower Moon), and we have fun attempting to cast other books we’d like to see made into a movie.
This past year we read a variety of books from a Pulitzer prize winner to fiction best sellers as well as a few non-fiction. Many of us particularly like historical fiction, which allows us to both learn history and enjoy a good story. While we don’t all like every book we read, we generally agree after our discussion that we were glad we read and discussed that month’s selection.
A few notable selections we read this past year::
Trust by Hernan Diaz
God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
The Trackers by Charles Frazier
And upcoming books to be discussed in the months ahead include:
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
There There by Tommy Orange
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
You can always find our members at the Y reading and/or exercising. Both activities are keeping us healthy and active! Our only complaint: too many books, too little time.
-Molly Wescott
All of our Spotlight Groups receive a box of books for discussion! Milkweed Editions will be sending the members of The Mission Valley YMCA Book Club copies of Aviary by Deirdre McNamer and The Shame by Makenna Goodman.
To enter to become an RGC Spotlight group, email a picture and description of your group to info@readinggroupchoices.com.