Mental Health/Well-being book club

Its no secret that I am a bookworm. I have always loved reading and when I’m reading a really good book I like to talk about it. I have read a few books in the last year about mental health/self help/well-being and I enjoyed reading them but I found that I couldn’t talk to my family and friends about the books because of the subjects. This was especially hard when I was reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin because it really inspired me (Enough to start my own Happiness Project!) but I knew that people around me would laugh and proclaim the book as nonsense, so I had to keep it to myself. On Twitter and in the blogging world however, there are a lot of like minded people and I have been able to talk about THP and other self help/well-being books. So this weekend myself, Rose (@rosewiltshire) and Alex (@AJ628studentMH) were discussing books over Twitter and came up with the idea of an online book club. The idea is that we choose and read one book a month as a group, then we can chat on Twitter or review the book on our blogs or both.

Interested? Here is our plan so far, written by Alex:

Between now and weekend of 6/7 Dec
Promote the idea and get a list of interested people

Over the weekend of 13/14 Dec
Getting one or two suggestions from everyone interested as to what the first book could be, then taking a vote. You don’t have to make a suggestion. You could just check the list of suggestions and make your vote.

Hopefully by Monday 15 Dec
Decide on the book!

Early January 2015
Start book!

We would then repeat the process each month. People can leave or join “the group” at anytime, even half-way through the month.

In terms of the “group” feeding back and discussing the book, we are still thinking about this. One possibility is doing a # (hashtag) Twitter chat at the end of the month. Other possibilities just include writing a piece on the book and how you found it. You could do this on your own blog site and then share it. If you don’t have a blog site, one of us could post it for you?

We don’t want people feeling that they have to participate in a “live” # twitter chat. Some people won’t be up for that, or we won’t all be able to agree a good time. The hope is that various members of the group will just chat to each other on Twitter during the month about how they are getting on with the book. We can then host a “Twitter meet-up via the #” at the end of the month. Equally if you just want to read the book and type up your feedback and post it, that’s fine.

I am going to set up a book club page on this blog, so that all of the links to peoples reviews are in one place, then we can browse through each others reviews. If you don’t have a blog you can email me your review and I will post it on your behalf.

If you want to join in, please contact me on here or Twitter (@CalmKitchen) and we will be asking for book suggestions soon!

Oh and while you’re at it, check out Rose and Alex’s blogs too =)

Take care,

Hayley x