Mary Lehman has always loved to read. Ten years ago, while chatting with a friend, the Woodbury resident came across the idea of starting a book group. “I had always wanted to be in a book group,” she says; it seemed like a great way to combine her loves of reading, socializing and trying new things. So in 2004, Lehman launched the Very Best Book Club (nicknamed the VBBC) with a small group of book-loving Woodbury women. Ten years later, the club’s ranks have swelled to 16 members, four of whom have been participating since the group’s inception.
The club holds its meeting in members’ homes, on a rotating basis, on the last Thursday of each month. In recent years, Lehman explains, the size of the group has kept all the members from meeting at once. Instead, she says, the VBBC has split into two smaller groups to make it easier for the hostess. “We eat dinner together and then talk about the month’s book over a glass of wine,” Lehman says. “There’s always great food and great wine and laughter, and sometimes disagreements over whether we appreciated the book or not.”
Lehman cites the variety of books chosen as one of the best parts of being in the club. “It’s been so fun to get outside of the kinds of books I would have picked for myself,” she says. The guidelines for choosing books are relatively simple, Lehman explains: nothing too violent or gory, and no gratuitous sex. Otherwise, members are free to choose what they are interested in or have been longing to read and discuss.
Each year since 2006, Lehman and her club have put on a year-end awards show-style gathering where they choose favorite books, characters and authors they’ve read throughout the year. “I make ballots and we have little envelopes like at the Academy Awards,” Lehman says. “It’s so much fun. It’s the highlight of the year for our book club.”
The first Friday after New Year’s, the group heads to a different restaurant in the Twin Cities area to celebrate the year in books and choose next year’s reads. Though the members are all Woodbury residents, Lehman says they enjoy visiting restaurants outside their immediate vicinity to experience all the metro area has to offer. In past years, the event has taken place at such restaurants as Heartland in downtown St. Paul, the Melting Pot in downtown Minneapolis and Tria Restaurant in North Oaks.
According to club member Heidi Crist, book club always offers a fun night out to look forward to. Crist, of friend of Lehman’s from Woodbury Lutheran Church, joined the book club in 2009. Recently married and without any children, she says she had plenty of time for reading. “I’m the kind of person who has always preferred picking up a book to watching a movie,” Crist says.
Now the mother of three young children, Crist says she values the monthly book club meetings more than ever. Her two favorite books the group has read are The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.
According to Lehman, the biggest benefit of the club has been the breadth of opinions that she has been exposed to through the monthly conversations. “We get an amazing variety of books, and such different insights about what members have read or felt or interpreted,” she says. “It adds such a level of richness when compared to reading on your own.”
Very Best Book Club Favorites
2013: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh & The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton (tie)
2012: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel by Helen Simonson; Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani; Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel by S. J. Watson (three-way tie)
2011: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
2010: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
2009: The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2008: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
2007: The Bee Keeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
2006: Cry the Beloved Country by Allan Paton and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (tie)
