I thought I would share how I came up with the name for our book club that is now 266 chapters strong and growing in leaps and bounds, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs. We are now the largest international “meeting and discussing” book club in the world. I always wanted to be in a book club so when the local book club invited me to attend their meeting, I could hardly wait. Towards the end of the meeting, I blurted out how happy and excited I was to join their book club when the hostess took me by the arm and dragged me out to the galley of her plantation home. Whispering, she said,”I don’t know how to tell you this Kathy, but we invited you as guest, not a member to our book club. There are only eight members in our book club so unless somebody dies or moves away that’s it!”As I drove home humiliated, I thought if there is ever going to be a book club that I would want to be a part of, I was going to have to start it. So that’s what I did. In March of 2000, I launched the charter chapter. I named the book club, The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas as pulpwood is the industry of the area and pulpwood is used to make paper, paper is used to make books. But we would not be reading ‘pulp” fiction, we would read good books by authors who were yet undiscovered so we could help them get discovered in a big way. We would be an inclusive book club, rather than an exclusive. Shoot, anyone can be in my book club, even men, thus the Timber Guys of which my husband came up with the name. Our motto is “where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the RULE!” The Timber Guys motto is “got wood”. You get the picture. We may not take ourselves very seriously donning our tiaras to be “beauty within” queens, wearing bling and leopard print, but we do take reading great books very serious.
We are not you mama’s book club, we are the reading future as we figured out how to make reading the #1 choice for entertainment! We make reading BIG TIME FUN! Won’t you all join this book-loving party?
Thanks for all your website does to promote literacy!
Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs
www.beautyandthebook.com
www.pulpwoodqueen.com
