Toss the Bride by Jennifer Manske Fenske

This book was chosen entirely for theme potential. We needed a book about weddings so we could dig out those old dresses. If you are looking for a great discussion book look elsewhere. This is an easy fun read. We did create some questions to get the ball rolling at the meeting because we could not find any online! Check those out in the sidebar. The host decorated with candles, bubbles, flowers and cards from her own wedding. Another member ordered a cake exactly like her wedding cake from the same bakery with the book colors and title on top.

Everyone brought a wedding photo to share and display during the meeting. We had Smoked Salmon appetizers, a shrimp tray, salad, punch, and blue heart cookies to match the book colors. Another member created wedding gifts for each guest. Special spoons, bracelets, book light and a book. Wrapped in classic wedding paper to fit the theme.

This may have not been the perfect book club book but it was a wonderful time! We celebrated, laughed, stuffed our bellies, made memories and shared memories.

Till next month:)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Our February pick was the result of our search for a fun “theme” book: one that lent itself to trying new and different food/drink, costume, and decoration ideas. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a historical fiction novel that has a load of information about traditional Chinese culture and offered the opportunity to celebrate all things Asian.

Much of the authentic Chinese food mentioned in the book is hard to come by, so we had to improvise a bit. We were able to come up with a recipe for the sugared taro root dessert that ends up being an important part of the story, and we sampled the kanji soup that was a staple of the characters diets. Both of these dishes were very different from anything we are used to, and it was so much fun to try foods that were actually eaten in China at the time the story takes place. We got lucky at an Asian market and found a modern day version of the rice balls and sweet cakes that appear throughout the book. We also filled up on a couple of appetizers from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant, including, of course, fortune cookies!

sugared taro root

We had a great time trying to replicate some of the items that were in the story, particularly the fans and the embroidered slippers that were so vital to the characters in the novel. We found some beautiful fans at World Market for each book club member. The slippers were a bit harder to find…so we made our own! Through trial and error, we used red felted wool to sew a pair of slippers for each person, and we embroidered each slipper with a firefly and the Chinese character “friend”. Time consuming, but worth it!

fans and handmade slippers

An easier craft idea we came up with was using Chinese take out containers as gift boxes for each pair of slippers. We decorated each box with a club members name written in Chinese, (easily found by Google search) and also wrote each persons Chinese name on shoji type screens. We then put white Christmas lights behind each screen to illuminate them. We took another couple of strands of lights and made decorated paper lanterns to cover them.



costumed in our Asian outfits in front of shoji screen



We also came up with a fun addition to the book discussion. We looked up each persons “animal” as found in the Chinese zodiac calendar, and we read the corresponding personality traits assigned to each of us. This, in addition to the many issues brought up by the book itself, created lots of great discussion and made for a memorable book club! (Tip: February is the perfect time for a Chinese themed meeting because party stores have Chinese New Year decorations in stock).

Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin

In celebration of the one year anniversary of the Firefly Book Club, we decided to keep the theme going by choosing a book with "firefly" in the title....which is harder than it sounds! Some of us were already familiar with author Charles Martin, and we went with his "Chasing Fireflies".

Also in honor of our very first book discussion, (see Kristin Hannah's "Firefly Lane"), we dressed in "firefly blue". We had a blast taking several quizzes that focused on the 10 books that we read in our first year together. We tested our memories to see how many book quotes we could match to the character/book they were from, as well as how many songs we could match up with the book it was mentioned in. We also reminisced about our favorite book club memories of the year.

As a special memento, we created a recipe book to give to each member containing food/drinks featured at each meeting. TIP: if you decide to try this, we suggest you work on it throughout the year by typing up recipes and making copies as you go along so it doesn't become an enormous project at the end of the year.

Cook Book



We did make sure we also made time to discuss our first book of the year! The most prominently featured food item in "Chasing Fireflies" is Moon Pies, and we had a good time with this! We had several store bought varieties on hand, as well as a super yummy homemade version that will definitely be a part of our next cook book. Since we like to stay true to our book, we had a bottle of whiskey just in case anyone wanted a swig…he he. This book had some great discussion questions and turned out to be a great book club pick!