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Book club aims to keep adults reading

When Belinda Tolar first moved to Manchester from South Carolina last March, one of the first things she did was call up the Coffee County Manchester Public Library to ask when their adult book club met.

“They said, well we don’t have one,” Tolar said. “I said, well you do now.”

A lifelong avid reader, Tolar worked with the library to establish a book club for adults in the community. Its first official meeting was in May 2023.

“It was in the spring and there was just three of us,” club member Joann Hunter said.

Hunter said she moved to Manchester three years ago from Christiana, Tennessee, and like Tolar, was hoping to connect with a library book club.

“For me it was to meet some people,” she said. “I moved here, it will be three years in February and I love to read and I kept asking them are you all ever going to have a book club because I thought that would be a great way to meet people.”

The book club meets at the Coffee County Manchester Public Library on the second Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. and all are welcome to attend.

“We don’t read all women’s books, men are welcome too,” she said.

Club members meet to determine the books they will read for the upcoming six months, and library employees utilize the inter-library loan program to collect enough copies of the book of the month for club members.

“That way you don’t have to buy it unless you really want to buy it,” Hunter said.

Tolar said the book club not only encourages adults to keep reading, but it also club members to enjoy fellowship and connect over a shared love of books.

“I like to discuss books with people and nobody in my family is a reader, so I had nobody to talk to about books and I love talking about books, especially Stephen King books for me,” she said.

Hunter said club members like to have a little variety when it comes to picking out their books, which can range from classic literature to Stephen King novels.

“For Halloween we read Stephen King,” Tolar said. “For Christmas we are reading Richard Evans Christmas Box.”

Chelsey Majors, one of the younger club members, said she has not had any conflicts with other club members when it comes to deciding what to read.

“I think it is just finding books I never thought I would read and I ended up loving them, especially the Poisonwood Bible,” Majors said. “It is historical fiction and I thought this is going to be so boring and I loved it.”

Majors said she is more of a fan of fantasy books, with some favorites being The Hunger Games, Divergent and Harry Potter.

“I am kind of learning a whole new array of books,” she said.

The Coffee County Manchester Public Library will next meet at 6 p.m., Tuesday Jan. 9 to discuss “The Christmas Box” by Richard Paul Evans. For more information about the book club, call the library at 931-723-5143.