The Weird Sisters Challenge is now closed.
Congratulations to Judith @ Leeswammes' Blog
You are the winner!
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| Image from the cover of the book by Eleanor Brown |
My sister, Teri, and I have lived in different towns, and often different states, our entire adult lives. Our homes are currently 194 miles apart. Teri is joining me at my house for the Read-A-Thon, so together we're sponsoring the Weird Sisters Challenge.
We've spent many hours on the road and phone keeping in touch, but there was always so many family-related topics to discuss during our precious time together that books often got left out. So, in 1998, we began the "TandT Bookclub" (for Teri and Tami, because we're incredibly creative women). The format has changed through the years, but the basic idea is that we take turns selecting a book to be read within a specific time period. The person who chooses the book is responsible for planning some sort of activity to go along with the reading - making a recipe from the book, lunch at a location inspired by the story, a craft, or just discussion questions. (We confess, we don't always get this part accomplished - distance is an issue there, too, but that's the general concept.)
The Challenge is to tell us how you share your love of books with family or friends who live at a distance. You can submit a picture, humorous anecdote, or just a description of how you keep that reading connection going.
The challenge will be open for two hours (till 5:00 CT). Winner will receive a copy of The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown and a "family" photo frame. This challenge is open to all countries.
My mom and I are book reading fiends. We no longer live in the same town, so when we find books the other would like, we save them up. During holidays or other travels, we deliver the goods to the recipient. It's wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThis is a actually a great challenge, but I'm so annoyed with myself, because when I went food shopping, I considered buying bananas but bought apples and grapes instead. Bananas would have been perfect to stage with Anna and the French Kiss! Now I have to think of something else ~grumble~
ReplyDeleteMy best friend lives in New Zealand, I live in Denmark. We don't see each other nearly as often as we'd like, so most of our communication is email or Skype. We both have Kindles, so we will take turns sending each other ebook-copies of books we've read and loved and want the other person to read. Kindle books come cheap, and we mostly share a taste in books, so it's a brilliant way of expanding our libraries and makes for never-ending conversation topics.
ReplyDeleteI still need to convince her to sign up for GoodReads though.
My sister lives about an hour and a half away from me now, but every so often she'll visit. Every time she visits she knows she can and will have free reign over my entire book collection (as long as I've read it!) I also do this with a friend that's sort of like my sister too! :)
ReplyDeleteMelissa Caldwell
For many years, my best friend and I lived some 300 miles apart, and are both big book fans. In fact, one of the ways we first started talking was when I pretended to be interested in a book I wasn't so I would have something to talk about this other bookworm with... and the book stayed in my locker for nearly the whole semester, unread. Anyway, to share in that interest while we were apart, we either: had spirited book vs. movie debates over the phone (it's awesome to rant about movie screw-ups with someone who actually shares your passion for them); pestered each other with recommendations until the other finally gave in, or at least pretended to; or we would just stash away a few select books in "care packages" and give them to the other whenever we got to visit. In any case, it made for lots of interesting conversation.
ReplyDeleteMy old Mum relies on me for her reading habit. I get books for her from my local library and travel by train to see her about every two weeks. I feel a bit like a drugs dealer.
ReplyDeleteI bring her books I know and sometimes books I think she will like that I don't know. Then she points out how great a particular book was when she finishes and I end up reading it too. We've read a lot of books in common that way.
Tami, thank you for hosting this lovely giveaway. It's made me think, and I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. I'm not officially read-a-thon-ing today, but I thought I'd throw my two cents in.
ReplyDeleteMy sister-in-law and I live only about 15 miles away from each other, but we've come up with a little book club of our own that sounds like your TandT book club. We just pick a book to be read together and then we have lunch to discuss it.
I've also thought about starting a mail book club with my family members. The idea would be to purchase one book, read it, and mail it along to another family member, who would do the same. I'm not sure how it would work in practice though.
I share my love for reading with my husband. We may not always read the same things, but our interests do overlap sometimes and I rather enjoy forcing books that I love onto him ;]
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMe and my friend Linda have the same tastes in books. She lives in the Bahamas while I live in Connecticut, USA. We both like a series and we both buy them and discuss them, not that we read them at the same time or anything.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I'm the only one in my family who reads. No one else really understands my love of books.
I have shared certain authors but my mother is the one that continually sends books to my sister. They all turn to me for readaing advice. I have picked out books for different members of the family. My sister occasionally loans me books that I promise I will eventually get to.
ReplyDeleteMy best friends and I just started a bookclub! We're going to be picking a book each month to read and then discuss via Skype, yay!
ReplyDeleteMost of my reading friends are local. Sometimes I talk them into buying/borrowing a book, and sometimes I feel like I can't risk the fact that they might not read it and hand them my copy and simply say, "read". :)
ReplyDeleteMy mom, however, lives a couple hours away and every time she comes to visit or I go home to visit, I give her one of my YA books to read. She's made fun of my loving to read YA book for months, but once I got her reading, she actually enjoyed it; I even got a phone call from her last night that she had flown through Gayle Forman's If I Stay and Where she went in just a few days and they were two of the best books she's read in years! It made me smile and revel in the chance to silently say, "I told you so," to my mom! :)
I share my love of reading not only with my family and friends, but with pretty much anyone willing to listen to me, frankly. I have a LOT of books, and have for years pretty much operated as a lending library to a whole bunch of my friends (mainly so I have someone to talk about the books with - how can I gush about the books I love unless my friends know what I'm talking about). Now that several of them have e-readers, we tend to share e-books amongst ourselves. I also love giving books away as presents.
ReplyDeleteAs I also work as a teacher, my job is to try to get kids to read more. I can be quite naggy.
I have to say that I don't really share my love for bnooks off line that much. Mostly online. I do however tell my friends if I have read a book that I think they might enjoy. And they come to me for suggestions too. I would love to have a combined book/cooking club in my area.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, I'd started an on-line book club using Google Groups for some local friends. My sister-in-law in Singapore also participates in the discussion, as does my friend's sister living in Thailand, so it's turned into an international group, even if most of the members are Canadian!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I read a book that I can't put down, I always tell my mom about it. She used to live a few blocks away, and that made it easy for me to just check the books out from the library for her, or lend her my copy. Since she moved about 1200 miles away, it's a little more difficult. When she first moved though, I made sure she got a library card and went and talked to the nice librarians to find out how she can ILL books that they don't have. I still recommend books for her, and keep a mental list of series for her whenever she finishes one.
ReplyDeleteMost of my 'in real life' friends and family aren't big readers, except for one of my aunts. She reads my blog sometimes, and when I do see her, about once a year, we'll chat about all the great books we've read lately. I'll often pick up a couple books I think she'll like to bring with me for my yearly visit "home", and she'll often do the same. I love our book chats and often wish we lived closer. :)
ReplyDeleteBack in 1996, I met other readers in an AOL chat room to discuss Oprah's first book club choices. A dozen or so of us, who were the most active, named ourselves the Book Buddies. When Oprah moved from AOL to her own Oprah.com, I continued with another group, using the same name. When Oprah discarded years of our book discussions, I started a third group of Book Buddies on Blogger, with some of the same people still hanging in there. We are not currently active, but if any of you want to talk books with me, the blog is still there. How about it? Are you interested? Leave me a message at Book Buddies:
ReplyDeletehttp://bookbuddies3.blogspot.com/
or at my book blog:
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2012/04/readathon-april-2012.html
We posted how we share books with family in our post here: http://wp.me/p18lIL-WT
ReplyDeleteThanks for the awesome giveaway!
For me really it is the blog. I have relatives in Alaska and in California who connect with me through the blog and pick books off my over the top "SSSQQQQUUUEEEEE" reviews. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is fun when they visit because in person, it is like they have been with me all year around because they already know the books and the discussion from out online conversations.
I have considered starting an online books club for us all to connect one, but I just dont know where i would find the time. :)
journey through books@gmail.com
My blog is really the main way that I share my love of reading with my family. It posts to my facebook and I've made sure that every family member has a link to it. Many of them comment but I know not all of them have time to read.
ReplyDeleteI constantly use Twitter to harass my friends with book recommendations. :-D I don't have many people to discuss books with in my physical life, so I started my blog and made a few good friends thanks to its capability of opening lines of communication. Now, I have no problems finding people to talk books with and I've become even more enthusiastic about what I read.
ReplyDeleteSadly I don't have very many people that I can share my love of books with. There are a few locally but we don't stay in contact that often, but when we do we are constantly throwing recommendations back and forth. I recently managed to get my boyfriend to read The Hunger Games trilogy and I loved listening to him react to all the stuff that was going on. I even have a younger cousin who I buy books for whenever I get the chance, so eventually she can have shelves as full as mine.
ReplyDeleteMostly I just share my love with those I've met through book blogging. Either way it's fun to have discussions about books and see what other people think about them.
kiltgirl1@yahoo.com
My family all lives in a different state than my husband and me but we all love to read. I love to use Goodreads to discuss different books with my brother-in-law as he and I have very similar tastes.
ReplyDeleteI also give my mom lists of books to read when she gets low on books (even it she sometimes doesn't read them because her one friend insists that the books "aren't good." This is what happened with The Help!).
My sister is always willing to read anything so I give her any books that I've already read and she is guaranteed to read it eventually. She also does Goodreads and we often have lengthy discusses on the comments sections of each book when she finishes them.
My friends actually call me their dealer. We all know each others tastes so well. Whenever we meet up I usually have some books to pass on to them that I know they will like. We generally have a books swap. I have a few friends that come to me quite often with recommendations.
ReplyDeleteMy mum and I don't have the same tastes but I am usually a bad influence on her when it comes to buying books. Very occasionally will we lend each other books too.
I have a friend that I get all my classics suggestions from. She is so well read there and has never been wrong yet. I thought I knew my classics well but she has come up with a few I had never heard of. Love her recomedations.
One of my best friends has moved to Oregon for school. In a way to keep in touch, every month we've started to choose a book to read together to discuss during one of our Skype dates. As we read, we randomly email the other to boast or rant to ask questions/feedback.
ReplyDeleteMy friends and I are avid readers. Unfortunately, we run into the same problems: college sucks the time out of our lives for reading. One day, we were discussing our recent fun read (The Hunger Games series) and other books when the idea hit us: start a book club!
ReplyDeleteEach month, on the book club's facebook page, we put out a list of genres, and vote. From the chosen genre, we select about 6 to 7 books and vote on picking one. If two get the majority, we have another round of votes until we finally have 1.
We then read the book individually, and meet at a chosen location to discuss it.
This whole group reading thing has brought us together and re-invigorated my desire and thirst for reading. We go book shopping together at different places (Books and Books, Barnes and Nobles, thrift stores, etc. . . )and it's so much fun :)
My friend Autumn and I take turns picking books to read together. We live across the country from each other. We read the books and then schedule time to chat via skype or the phone. We've read Three Cups of Tea, The Satanic Verses, Pride and Prejudice and the Millennium Series. We grew up together and have always been big readers. I really enjoy getting to share our love of books despite the distance and busyness of our daily lives.
ReplyDeleteMost of my friends who love reading live far away, so, I prepare a HUGE box and stuff it full of books and mail it. I do it every few months.
ReplyDeleteOften the need to share my experience in a book comes when I really fall for a universe or setting in a book. This usually happens with books that have been loved worldwide already, which is fortunate for me as it will be many people to share with. For example this happened with Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games (also a new popular Swedish book called The Circle which will be available in English pretty soon). When I really love a universe I want to keep exploring it, so I turn to fanfiction. Both reading and writing, even though I haven't written much myself since I was in my mid-teens.
ReplyDeleteI often recommend books to my friends and if they liked them as well, I continue with recommend fanfictions that I really liked or if I wrote one my self I make them read that. It is always nice to see how other people interpret the characters of a book, and how they like or dislike my intepretations of them.
Actually, I don't have a ton of friends and family that read who live at a distance, but I do share books and blog posts on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteMy younger sister and I are ridiculously close and have very similar tastes in books, but she lives about 1,500 miles away, and has for about 10 years. So whenever one of us finishes a good book, we text and/or call the other sister to let her know, as soon as we finish it.
ReplyDeleteThis can backfire when the older sister (me) finishes a book at 3AM and calls the younger sister (her) to tell her about a book she just HAS to read. And then the younger sister reminds the older sister (me again) that she has a final in 3 hours, has been cramming for it the whole night, and just fell asleep.
...oops! Luckily my sister can fall right back asleep, otherwise that wouldn't have ended well.
And yes, she passed her final :D
Goodreads! I met a bunch of awesome friends on one of the Goodreads groups, and we chat online and skype all the time now!
ReplyDeletePlus my brother and I have been stealing books from each other pretty much our entire lives. We don't spend much time chatting about them, but we do read a lot of the same things and give each other recommendations :)
Here's my post!
ReplyDeletehttp://zaraalexis.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/doing-the-dewey-mini-challenge-5-the-weird-sisters-challenge-04-21-2012/
Thanks!
Zara Alexis
zgarcia(dot)alvarez(at)gmail(dot)com