In early 2018 while searching for quietly active ways to promote interaction among members, the Public Image Committee of the Rotary Club of Lake Spivey/Clayton County encouraged interested Rotarians to think about developing a book club. Several members responded and following a low key approach, they conducted their first session on February 19, 2018 (pictured here). The participants named the book club Rotary Reads, and in the belief that not many Rotary Clubs also include book clubs, chose to call themselves "pioneers."

The basic outline of Rotary Reads is that, as a general rule beginning in February, it meets between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm on the third Monday of every other month. During the first fifteen minutes or so of each meeting, the Pioneers discuss potential future selections with the understanding that the person who recommends a selection will be the moderator of the discussion that focuses on that book. All genres are welcome, including history, fiction, science, philosophy, biography, etc. To date, we have discussed:

• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer
• The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien • Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
• Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice, Criss Dodd
• Educated, Tara Westover
• The Traveler's Gift, Andy Andrews
• Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
• The Greatest Day in Sports: 15 Reasons Why There's Nothing Else Like the Kentucky Derby, Jim Weber
• Black Winning Jockeys, James and Monica Saunders.
• Here Comes Exterminator, Eliza McGraw.
• Secretariat, a movie based on the novel Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, William Nack.
• Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island, Will Harlan
• A Colony in a Nation, Chris Hayes
• A Nation of Nations, Tom Gjelton
• The Promise of a Pencil, Adam Braun
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, Abraham Verghese
• Not Without My Father, Andra Watkins
• Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
• The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah
• The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Kim Michele Richardson (Scheduled for September 21.)

Valuing flexibility and to assist with promoting our major fundraiser in 2019 which had a Kentucky Derby theme, the Pioneers conducted a program at a regular meeting of the full club several weeks before the running of the Derby that featured different Pioneers discussing four books about different aspects of the Kentucky Derby. Another interesting event occurred when we discussed the book, Not Without my Father written by Andra Watkins, who we learned also is a Rotarian living in South Carolina. We invited her to join us for the discussion, and she did, which resulted in a great meeting.

During DG Jim Squire's visit to our Rotary club last year, we presented him with a copy of the book, "The Rotary Club Murder Mystery."

This past spring the potential impact of the Corona virus created some concern, but Rotary Reads has not been seriously affected. Instead, we have met once with proper social distancing at Stately Oaks in Jonesboro and also via Zoom. Indications suggest that the book club actually might have increased in importance because of the way it develops and nurtures connections between members during this time of increasing isolation. As Dr. Edward Hollowell of the Harvard Medical School describes in his book Connect, and I paraphrase, the daily demands of careers and life often cause us to give less attention than we should to maintaining connections with each other and our world, connections which he argues are critical to health and happiness. Rotary Reads provides our Rotary Club an important avenue that can help members develop and maintain those connections, and if so, it fulfills its fundamental purpose of quietly promoting interaction among members.