​"Women, books & the outdoors will save the world."

I first wrote the above sentence as Outdoor Book Club's "manifesto" back in 2015, a year and a half after I'd first stepped out onto the trail at Blandford Nature Center with 10 women, almost all of whom were strangers, on a freezing cold January day:

This photo was taken before I launched the website, before I'd met hundreds of women who also loved the outdoors and books, before I won a bunch of money to start a travel business in a 2014 business plan competition.

But the most important thing this photo represents?

The beginning of an amazing friendship with some of the women in the photo, whom I met for the first time that day.
​

More and more, I notice people no longer set New Year's resolutions and instead pick a yearly word (or words) to live by. One friend picked the word "Adventure" a few years back, but found that 12 months of constant activity was exhausting. Not all the adventures she encountered were good ones. The next she picked joy. That seemed to work better. This year she chose “Engage.”

I love author and spiritual badass Danielle LaPorte. Whenever she comes out with a new book or planner I try to support her work through buying one, but frankly, I keep returning to her book The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals With Soul for inspiration (The Fire Starter Sessions is also really, really good.) 

In the book, LaPorte suggests setting goals by how you want to feel. The feeling(s) are the goal. That way, there's room for moving and wiggling — if you want to feel “accomplished,” it doesn't really matter if you get the corner suite or lose 15 pounds, either way, you're a winner. You've reached your goal.

What does it look like in action?

Every year I have to think long and hard about which feelings I want to focus on. This year, after weeks of ruminating, I think I know what those words are. She suggests 2-4 words. I picked four words, but really they are two sets of two words; they work together.

In 2015 I had to give up Outdoor Book Club, or at least the business model that I was operating it under. I couldn't do the guided trips anymore — not only did they suck the life out of me, doing all the prep, the marketing, providing the gear, agenda planning, making reservations, figuring out meals — they simply weren't profitable. I couldn't support my family emotionally or financially.

Four years later, it feels right to relaunch Outdoor Book Club as a movement. I’ve seen first hand how powerfully the combination of books and the outdoors resonates with women.

What does that mean?

It means I want to CREATE conversations around books, nature and women. And those conversations lead women to CONNECT. 

Outdoor Book Club, in 2019 and beyond, needs to be about creativity and connection. If I'm not focusing on activities that do either of those things, then I know I'm focusing on the wrong things.
GRACE and GRITIn her book Grace (Eventually) Anne Lamott describes GRACE (which also happens to be my daughter's name) as "A ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.” She adds, “I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

I think of grace as "a proactive acceptance, love and caring for our fellow human beings — and ourselves.” 

Grace often shows up in my life as:

• Cutting myself some slack
• Deciding to be kind to myself and others — even when being a hardass would feel so much more...comfortable (ironic, right?).
• Meeting other flawed human beings around us — and ourselves — exactly where we are. 

Grace is so hard! I'm a recovering self-help book addict and thus always striving to try and be better than I was the day before. I can’t always pull it off. Life exhausting, overwhelming & annoying. So I try and think of grace and remind myself: You are just fine the way you are. Try and do better, yes; but don't kid yourself in that all that striving will protect you against hurt and disappointment. 

Which brings us to GRIT.

I've been a fan of researcher Angela Duckworth's book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance for awhile — it uses actual data to help us learn how to be better people. While I can spend all my time trying to forgive myself and quiet my inner critic, I also need the grit to push through and meet my goals. Yes, it’s hard to keep pushing. No, we often don’t want to take one more exhausting step forward. But are we capable of hiking up our proverbial skirts and pushing forward anyway? Yes.

The answer is almost always yes. 

Grace & grit: the peanut butter and chocolate of self-improvement.

​So if you've been with me from the beginning (and not just the beginning of this piece — though congrats if you just showed up here, started reading and are not at the end!), if you started watching or reading or following OBC way back in 2013 when I first conceived the idea, thank you. My gratitude is unbounded.

(If you actually went on a trip & endured my bumbling and scrambling event planning skills and still managed to have a great time, THANK YOU. Years later, I'm still inspired by your passion and commitment to books and the outdoors.)

If you're new around here, WELCOME. I'm so glad you're here. If you like what you see here and want to keep up with what's going on, stop by and follow/like the Outdoor Book Club Facebook page.

Here’s what you can expect going forward:

• A new online community — a "virtual campfire" where we can interact, ask questions, find inspiration. More on this to come.
• An updated blog — With new posts and content every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
• Online book club — Every month I'll schedule a time where we can get together and talk about a book, virtually, that we love that follows a theme I've picked for that month. Stay tuned for more details on this. (Got a suggestion for a book we should read? Send it to me!)
• Opportunities to connect in real life — Online is great, but it's the face-to-face connections that are the most powerful. Whether you're in Michigan (where I'm based) or somewhere else, I'm committed to finding ways for us to hike, kayak and camp outdoors together. And of course, we'll bring a book!

I want to hear your feedback on the relaunch of Outdoor Book Club — why you started coming in the first place, and what will keep you coming back in the future. Reply to this email.

Also, what words will you be living by this year? Let me know so I can send some good vibes your way, or create something that might help you along your journey, or connect you with a person or resource that can help. 

And of course I'll do it with creativity and connection; grace and grit. Because women, books & the outdoors will save the world.

Tallyho!

​​Jill Hinton Wolfe
Chief Heroine, Outdoor Book Club

P.S. Please share Outdoor Book Club with a woman you love! Sign up for our newsletter, share the manifesto to your social media feed or join the online OBC community. We can't start a movement without an army of women's strength, grace and beauty behind it!

You’ve read the book. You’ve highlighted moving passages and made notes in the margins. You’ve downloaded and printed out the book’s reader’s guide/discussion questions. The food is all set (the best book clubs always include some element of eating). All that’s left is to let the magic happen.

The date arrives
Start with greeting everyone who arrives, making sure to leave enough time for socializing. If members haven’t met each other before, it’s a good idea for everyone to go around and say something about themselves, such as why they’re looking forward to this book club, and what was the book that most influenced them in childhood. In fact, this is a good idea even if you’ve all known each other for years.

Now it’s time to have the discussion. Most books have discussion guides put out by the publisher, but it’s also good to have some generic discussion questions ready to go (see my post "Book club questions that work with any book" for a helpful list). It can help if there’s one person who acts as moderator. Here are some things for moderators to keep in mind:

• Connect the comments. If, while in the process of answering question 3, someone alludes to something that’s going on in question 5, don’t be afraid to skip around and let the conversation flow to the questions that come up naturally. You can choose to go back to question 4, but only if it makes sense. As you move through the questions, think about how the answers relate back to previous themes and ideas that you’ve discussed, and make those connections out loud — this will help build momentum.

• Try to involve everyone. This means sometimes directing questions towards the soft-spoken members of the group. No need to put anyone on the spot, but everyone’s perspective is important. Sometimes it takes just the right question, with the right timing, to draw someone out of their shell (while giving the louder members of the group some time to be contemplative).

• Keep on task. With groups of people, you always run the risk of setting out on tangents. It’s okay to let this happen a little, but you’re all there to discuss the book, so gently bring the conversation back to the book in an effort to be respectful of everyone’s time. There’s plenty of time for talking about vacations when book club has ended.

• Be aware of head versus heart responses. Some authors are incredibly adept at making our hearts leap in our chest (for good and bad reasons). Others know what it takes to engage your intellect. Think about what’s going on with the strong responses you get from the group — it is coming from above or below the neck? 

• Read aloud from the book. Ask everyone to read their favorite passage(s). Hearing the writing spoken out loud brings a certain gravitas to the book. 
  

Congratulations! You're well on your way to a rewarding, stimulating, likely laugh-inducing book club that will give back to you in ways you never could have imagined. Want even more tips on how to make your book club awesome? Download my Kindle ebook, "How to Start A Book Club That Changes the World" for details.

Picking the right people to join your book club can be a tricky proposition — you want a nice mix of people in order to foster some really great discussion. This may or may not include all of your besties. While it’s comfortable to just invite your inner circle to be part of the group, if you really want to learn and add some rich dynamics to the gatherings, try inviting people you’d like to get to know better.

Start with friends
You know your friends, you know what they like to read. Asking friends often makes communication, and thus scheduling and picking books, a bit easier.

Make sure you have similar reading styles
If you like fantasy novels about warlords and kung fu princesses, you’re probably not going to want to invite someone who reads nonfiction business books. A little variety is good — one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about book club is reading books that are out of my comfort zone. But you don’t want to overshoot your comfort zone by a hundred miles.

Ask them if they would be interested in joining a book club & why
Whether it’s in person or electronically, ask potential members what they would like to get out of the book club. This gets people thinking before you even have your first meeting about what kind of commitment they want to make to the group, which is never a bad thing. Start them off with some background about what you’re looking for, including the kinds of people and books, to start the conversation.

Finding (then asking) people you don’t know
If you’re new to town, or want to start a niche book club (a book club that only reads a very specific kind of book), or just are looking to meet new people, you should consider asking people you don’t know. Of course, this can be tricky, but if done right, can be extremely rewarding.

Meetup.com can be a great place to start a niche book club (in fact, Outdoor Book Club got started as a meetup group). There are some costs involved with going this route, but it’s one of the best places to find people online who are looking to get together in person. You could also start an open Facebook (or other social media) group using keywords that describe the types of books and/or people you’re looking for (i.e. “Business Book Club for Women” or “Smallville Philosophy Club”).

Finally, there’s always the old-fashioned way of posting flyers at your local library or bookstore. That’s certainly a good way of finding people who are right in your neighborhood, and who have the added bonus of patronizing places that love and support books (which are some of the best people in the world, if you ask me).

Want to learn more about how to start a book club that doesn't suck? Download my kindle ebook "How to Start a Book Club That Changes the World" from Amazon today.

Scheduling a time that works for everyone in your book club can be a huge headache. With everyone's different schedules and commitments, find a date, time and place can feel like a perfect storm. Here are a few guidelines to make scheduling your book club easier.

First set a meeting length
You’ll want to give your group enough time to fully discuss the book, but still have plenty of time left over for socializing. However, keep in mind that having a three-hour long book club can be intimidating for some people who are busy. For more social book clubs, evenings are a good time to schedule a meeting, so that people can stay later if they’d like to socialize more. But for more formal book clubs, sometimes lunch hours work better. In fact, my own book club was initially comprised of all co-workers, and sometimes the only times we could meet were in the executive conference room at lunch.

Pick a location
For book clubs among friends, rotating between the members’ living rooms is a good choice; that way one person doesn’t take on all the responsibility of hosting. For friendly/social book clubs, it’s best to keep the group to eight members or less, and no one should be required to host the group at their home if they don’t feel comfortable doing so. Restaurants, libraries, bookstores and even local parks and hiking trails can make good meeting spaces too (at Outdoor Book Club, we believe that being outdoors and talking about books is the best of both worlds!). If you decide to regularly meet at a public space, inviting 12 or more members becomes more feasible. 

Don’t be afraid to switch up your locations a bit — maybe pick someplace different for special occasions (like reading a book that inspired a movie, you go out to watch the movie then hold your discussion afterwards at a restaurant). Or maybe for your holiday party/gift exchange, you’ll decide to meet at the botanical gardens or museum, adding an a special air to your usual book club gathering. Or maybe your book club is having an anniversary, or someone is getting married, or you just want to treat yourselves to something special for your birthdays — in that case, can I suggest planning a custom Outdoor Book Club trip (I do all the work, you just show up and be awesome)? 

Sending the invite
Once you’ve got a good idea of a time, place and meeting length that works for everyone in the group, it’s time to send the official invitation.

As I’ve already mentioned, make sure you give people plenty of time to put the meeting on their calendars. Two weeks is good, but a month is even better. 

Make sure the email lays out all the details, in writing, that gives everyone all the information they need to get to the book club on time. There’s a template for doing this in my book "How to Start a Book Club That Changes the World" if you need some inspiration, but basically start with passion and excitement, be clear about your agreed-upon expectations and end with a warm, personal touch that let’s everyone know how happy you are that they’re part of this amazing little group.

“All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” 
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life 

“We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.” 
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.” 
― Joyce Carol Oates

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” 
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” 
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

“A word after a word after a word is power.” 
― Margaret Atwood

Starting a book club in today's day and age makes you a heroine in my books. You know why? Because it’s hard — damn hard — in today’s world of multiple calendars, varied commitments and general feelings of malaise to regularly get a group of smart, interesting people together to discuss life- and world-changing works of literature (because even 50 Shades of Grey changed the world, in its own weird way). 

First you have to decide what kind of books you’re going to read, then you have to pick the right people — who sometimes are total strangers (in which case the Universe picks them for you, which sometimes leads to pure magic). Once that’s done, you need to pick a date and time which works for everyone, which, let’s be honest, is near impossible for many fledgling book clubs. You have to pick the right books. You have to ask the right questions. 

But those things aren’t the hardest part of starting a book club that changes the world. 
You know what is? Deciding to make the commitment: committing to read the book, to show up as regularly as possible, to be there for the other people in the group. Woody Allen once said that “eighty percent of success is showing up” —and nowhere is that more true than for a book club.

My husband was telling me a story recently about a play group he knew about when his kids were younger (we’re both on our second marriage). Everyone wanted to be a part of this play group. They were organized, confident and happy, and everyone played by the rules.They didn’t flake out or schedule other things during the normal play group time. No one overstepped their bounds, because the boundaries were very clear and respectful. This is what makes a great book club too — the idea that this group is important to you, and everyone is invested in committing the time and energy to make it run smoothly.

But I believe in you! 
With the right guidance, you can form a book club that’s truly transformative for its members. By changing your lives, you change the world — because our lives are all a part of a huge tapestry of lives. When you pull one small string, the whole tapestry is changed. Books have that power: they hold within their pages the capacity to make us see our lives, the choices we make, and how we interact with others, differently. 

So why not not lay a truly powerful foundation? 
Does that mean asking the right people? Finding the right structure? Picking the right books? Of course all these things matter when forming a phenomenal book club, but it’s more than that: it’s a very specific magic that happens when all these things fall beautifully into place. It doesn’t happen every time, and with every group. But if you’re thoughtful what you want your book club to be, open to the fact that your group will change in wonderful ways you never could have imagined, and your heart(s) are in the right place, I think you’ll find your book club gives back to you and its members for years to come. 

Shall we get started?

Groucho Marx once famously said, “I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” In that spirit, I believe that being part of a book club, a really awesome book club, can be a bit subversive if done right. In order to keep your book club from merely fizzling out, you need to first understand what your own expectations for what would make a satisfying book club. Usually that means leading it yourself, at least initially. So if you’re willing to run the group (which I’m betting you are, given that you're reading this book), review the questions below before you ever invite your first member.

One of the hardest parts about book club is often the scheduling, so if you are clear from the beginning about what your commitment will be, and what kind of commitment you expect from others in the group, everything else will fall in place. You can always be flexible if your first vision doesn’t magically fall in place, but generally it helps if there’s a structure in place from the outset. Asking these initial, clarifying questions will not only will it help you get clear on why you want to start the group in the first place, it will also solidify in your own mind your commitment and dedication towards the group. And if you’re all in, why should others be too?