Booking Through Thursday and Weekly Geeks

It's been a long, long week, so in thankfulness for the fact it is friday, I'm doing two memes in one post.

Booking Through Thursday

This week's question: A combo of two suggestions by: Heidi and by litlove

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

I have recently joined a book club at work, and we meet for about an hour and eat food, then discuss the book. Usually whoever picked the book will sort of guide the discussion, but it is kind of a free-flowing group, so it usually evolves into chatting time by the middle of our meeting.

So far, I've been to two meetings, and for one the pick was The Handmaid's Tale, which I had already read (and did not have time to reread). This month's pick was Entombed (read my review here). It was a book that I did not care for. I would not have finished it if not for book club, and I forced myself to sit and read large chunks of it when my other books were calling my name. I don't know if I appreciated it more, but I actually finished it.

Weekly Geeks #7
Let’s have Photos Week.

1. Decide what to illustrate and start taking photos: Most of you are book bloggers, so you may want to post photos of your favorite reading spot, your TBR pile(s), your local book store, your favorite librarian, your child reading, etc. You may want to post several photos of a certain topic (like all nine of your kids reading!) or a mixed bag of photos that are unrelated except that they’re bookish. Or you may want to post just one photo, it’s up to you. If you have a different type of blog, post photos of whatever you think is suitable.

2. Create a post of your photos.

3. Don’t forget! Also link in your post to another participant’s WG photo post. Weekly Geeks is a community thing, remember! If you’re one of the first finished, of course, you may have to add your link later. See if you can find someone you don’t normally read to link to.

4. Once your post is up, come back and leave a link to that specific post (not just your regular blog url) in the Mr Linky at the bottom of this post.

If you've read my blog for very long, you know that I have a puppy named Rusty, who is pretty much the cutest, smartest puppy in the world. In fact, just because I can, I'm going to post a picture of him right now. Awww... isn't he cute??

This right here would be my stack of review books. I was very curious how to obtain the free books I saw other book bloggers talking about. I followed some of their advice (especially Eva's great post here on getting free books) and now I've got a stack of my own.

This picture (even though it is a bit blurry) shows you the three loves of my life. My husband (trying to get Rusty to pose for me), my books (this is where I keep the books I'm currently reading) and my puppy (who is chasing a laser light under the coffee table).

Rusty's been getting swimming lessons. Yes, I know that it is supposed to be instinctive for dogs, but it doesn't mean they always like being in water.

Here is a video of Rusty's 1st swimming lesson. Okay, apparently you have to crane your neck to see it because I don't know how to rotate the video. But in this video, you can just see the conflict going on in his head. "I want the stick. But I'm getting wet. I don't know if I like this water stuff. Okay, I'm leaving. No, I'm going back. But I don't know about this..."


Other Weekly Geeks I've been browsing:

Melody (and her cute daughter)
Chris' bookshelves
Katrina
Melanie's pics from Ukraine