Do You Speaka My Language

I am in a book club and just love it.  Doesn't sound cool I know but I have had some of the best craic and most heart warming conversations on these evenings.

Apart from broadening my reading horizons I find it fascinating that a group of women from such different walks of life share the same sense of humour, insecurities, worries and family stories.  That is until quite recently.

The beauty of this group is that it continues to grow and we have picked up new recruits throughout the years.  They consist of work colleagues, neighbours, mums from school, and friends.  Oddly enough no one has brought a family member.  I have no idea if this is intentional or not but I have noticed that the settling in period prior to discussing the book has become a haven for venting.

But at a recent book review, conversation turned around to children, courtesy of two new additions to the group.  This came as no surprise as we are often the happy recipients of hilarious anecdotes from one or two of the young mums.  However, on this occasion we had a conversation that lasted for almost two hours based on which child did what, said what and broke what. 

I am very mindful that people are not left out of conversations and checked the groups expressions.  Some of the young mums were beginning to wane and looked as if they felt their one evening a month refuge had been invaded.  The expressions of the childless members were of lost tourists in Rome not understanding the directions delivered in Italian.  For me, a mother of a grown son, it was like listening to Irish, I wasn't getting it all but I was picking up one or two phrases I learned ages ago.

We didn't ban our new members as we know this will soon be their space and time to be themselves.  However, we have a few new rules in place.

1) Only 1 humorous child story per person

2) Only 1 My Ex Husband is a Selfish Moran story

3). Only 1 Date from Hell story

4) Only 1 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (lovely son to teenager) story

The rules of course will fade (there are way too many stories in there) but will stay in place until we get the balance right again.  Now I have 3 "My Son's an Alien" stories but need to whittle down to one before the next book club.  Oh...... we do discuss the books we select.


Some of our favourite and most discussed books were:

Shadow of the Wind  by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
The History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka