About us
There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature. -P.G. Wodehouse
Broadened Horizons Book Club
Read humbly. Read widely.
The necessary condition of all good readers is to get ourselves out of the way.
-C.S. Lewis
Who: Women who enjoy reading
What: A more traditional literary group experience
When: The 2nd Thursday of every month
Where: It varies… wherever the mood of the book takes us. Often we’ll meet at a park or a member’s home.
Why: Because story is our favorite art form worthy of our time and we enjoy experiencing it together. We aim to get ourselves out of the way and read humbly and honor the nature of each book.
"Some people have the notion that you read the story and then you climb out of it into the meaning, but for the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning because it is an experience not an abstraction."
-Flannary O'Conner
"When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves.
The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare."
-Madeleine L’Engle A Scot to Jeanne D’Arc
"But in order to pronouce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it illicites no good response from ourselvs for that might be our fault. Others may be able to do with it what I can't."
- C. S. Lewis
Selecting our books
Our book club’s motto is to “read humbly and read widely” which give us the framework for selecting books.
- We purposefully pick books from a variety of genres, styles, settings, and publication dates.
- We attempt to stretch ourselves by reading books that aren’t always obvious book club titles.
- We intentionally avoid selecting newly published books, although there are occasional exceptions for especially beloved authors.
- We have a long-term goal to read around the globe, reading books with a strong sense of place from as many different locations as possible.
- We aim to balance our reading year with occasional lighter titles intermingled with heavier works.
- We love discovering more obscure titles that members would otherwise never read, while also reading at least one classic or modern classic each year.
- Although we try to verify availability in local library systems, we don’t limit ourselves to books that are currently in print.
- We select books that have an audio format, but occasionally choose books that don’t have that option.
Do you have a book suggestion for us?
BHBC resources:
Honey for a Woman’s Heart by Gladys Hunt
Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs
Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson
The Literary Life Podcast