manna?

Manna Book Club

Posted by Greg

For months I’ve talked about starting a book club and I’ve made a lot of lame excuses about it being summer, etc.  So now a few friends have called my bluff, and now I need to follow through and start it.

So, the idea is that we get together… somewhere IN PUBLIC in keeping with Manna’s values… and we talk about some book that we’re reading.  It’s about as complicated as that.  Now, I have three basic requirements:

1. We should meet somewhere cool, because I am basically a shallow person and don’t want to do this if we aren’t going to meet somewhere cool.  Coffee shop downtown?  Book store coffee shop like Barne’s and Noble?  Pub like New Holland or Curragh?  I think it should be somewhere that’s fun to be and makes us want to talk and laugh and makes us feel creative and happy.  Life’s too short otherwise.

2. We should read stuff that’s fun and interesting.  Maybe some fiction, maybe some non-fiction.  But the goal here is not to lay some heavy study group thing down, but to encourage each other to read and think and get new insights from each other and build some community together.  So we need to mix up the reading ideas.

3. It needs to be self-sustaining.  I travel for my work, and may be gone 1 or 2 meetings per month, so everyone needs to be in it together and want to do it.  If it’s like a leader-sheep deal that’ll get old real fast.  I want to help organize and facilitate and even “lead” with whatever insight my pastoral training and experience might give (not much, necessarily), but the group will need to keep itself going.

So, here’s the deal: reply to this thread if you’re interested and answer three questions: 1) what night of the week can you meet (and time)? 2) idea for where to meet? 3) any ideas on what to start reading?

Let’s get a thread going here and come to a consensus….

Greg