I BEAT MY WIFE

I've started a book club.

That sentence still feels faintly ridiculous, which is probably why I keep repeating it. You see, I’ve never been in a book club before. It's not really my thing.

I’ve never really read much fiction, not properly. And yet, here I am. Founder. Member. Treasurer. Entire committee. Population: two.

Me and my wife.

I got the idea from listening to Do Radio. I realised that our lives are changing. Again. The kids are getting older. Independent in ways that sneak up on you. One day you’re needed for everything. The next, you’re surplus to requirements for large chunks of the day.

There were 5 of us in the house. Soon it'll be 3. And in a blink of an eye, it will just be the two of us.

And I wanted something for us. Something shared. Something that wasn’t logistics. Something that didn't involve talking about the kids.

So I formed a book club.

Why a Book Club, and Why Now?

We already talk, of course. We talk constantly. About work. About the children. About what needs doing, who needs a lift, what’s for dinner, whether that noise the boiler just made is normal or the start of the end.

What we don’t always have is a shared third thing. Something external that isn’t practical. Something that gives us new words to use with each other.

A book felt right. Fiction, specifically. A world that isn’t ours. People who aren’t us. Problems we don’t need to solve.

Also, if I’m honest, I felt a little embarrassed about how little fiction I’ve read in my adult life. I read a lot, but it’s mostly non-fiction. Work-adjacent. Improvement-adjacent. Always trying to be better, faster, clearer, more informed.

Fiction asks something different. It asks you to sit still. To listen. To feel without immediately extracting a lesson.

That felt like a useful muscle to exercise.

The Rules (Such As They Are)

The rules are simple.

One book a month, if we can. Twelve in the year, ideally. It has to be fiction. We alternate choices. No homework vibes. No quizzes. No pressure to sound clever.

The goal isn’t to “get through” books. It’s to have something to talk about that isn’t the bins.

The first choice was hers.

She was already reading it, which felt like an efficient way to begin. Why complicate things? I’d just read the same book and we’d go from there.

The book was Sandwich by Catherine Newman.

It’s about a family roughly our age, with grown-up kids, all spending time together in a familiar holiday place. It’s about love and irritation and memory and the strange sensation of being both central and peripheral in your own family at the same time.

This isn’t a book review, so I won’t get into whether it’s good or bad. What matters is that it was the right book at the right moment.

And also that I finished it before her.

The Race I Pretended Wasn’t a Race

I started after her. She’d already made a dent in it. Sensible people would have taken their time.

I did not.

Somewhere in my head, a quiet but insistent voice decided that I needed to finish first. Not to win exactly. I didn’t need to announce it or claim a prize. I just needed to know.

I wanted to prove something. Mostly to myself.

I wanted to prove that I was taking this seriously. That this wasn’t a half-formed idea that would drift away after a couple of weeks. That we could do this. That we could make time. That twelve books in a year wasn’t some laughably optimistic fantasy.

So I read in snatched moments. Early mornings. Late evenings. Any gap that appeared. Not in a frantic way, but with intention.

And yes, I finished before her.

I didn’t announce it triumphantly. I don’t think I even mentioned it? Lol. Of course I mentioned it!

It was a small act of commitment.

What Fiction Does That Other Things Don’t

I know I wrote about fiction a couple of weeks ago. I talked about it being an empathy gym. That was theoretical. An idea of mine (which I happen to think is right). This was the practical exam and here’s the thing that surprised me.

Reading fiction didn’t feel like switching off. It felt like tuning in to a different frequency.

There was no checklist. No “key takeaway.” No moment where I thought, “I should underline this.” I was just there, inside someone else’s head, watching ordinary life unfold with a level of attention we rarely give it.

It slowed me down. In a good way.

It also gave us something to talk about that wasn’t personal, but somehow still was. We could talk about the characters and their choices and their blind spots, and in doing so, circle gently around our own lives without staring directly at them.

That’s a useful trick.

The Quiet Power of a Shared Story

What I hadn’t fully anticipated was how different it feels to read the same book at the same time.

Not in a classroom way. Not in a “what did you think of chapter three?” way.

More like a low-level hum of connection.

You’re both carrying the same world around in your heads. You reference it casually. You make observations without fully explaining them. There’s a sense of shared context that doesn’t require effort.

It reminded me of the early days of our relationship, when everything was a shared discovery. Music. Films. Places. Stories.

Somewhere along the way, those things can become background noise, replaced by responsibility and routine.

The book club felt like a way of turning the volume back up, just a little.

This Is Not About Becoming “A Reader”

I don’t suddenly think of myself as a fiction person now. I’m not announcing a new identity. I’m not about to lecture anyone on novels they should read.

This isn’t about self-improvement. It’s not about being more cultured or ticking boxes.

It’s about creating a small, intentional space in the month where something different happens.

One book. One conversation. One shared experience that doesn’t need to achieve anything beyond existing.

That feels valuable in itself.

Looking Ahead to the Other Eleven

We haven’t chosen the next book yet. That’s my pick. I’m already feeling the weight of responsibility, which is probably unnecessary.

The rules are deliberately light. If one month slips, it slips. If we end up reading ten instead of twelve, the world will continue spinning.

But the intention matters.

The act of forming the book club matters.

Saying, “This is something we do now,” even if imperfectly, even if quietly, changes the shape of time a little.

It creates an anchor point. A reason to pause. A shared rhythm.

And that, I think, is the real point.

Why I Keep Saying “I Formed a Book Club”

I keep repeating the phrase because I want it to stick.

Not just in language, but in reality.

I formed a book club.

It’s small. It’s informal. It doesn’t have a name or a WhatsApp group or branded bookmarks.

But it exists.

And for now, that’s enough.

I formed a book club.

I’m glad I did.

Until next time,

Jon "Bookworm" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

I guess this is as good a time as any to ask for book suggestions to add to our list? Let me know if you've read some amazing fiction recently. Doesn't have to be new. Doesn't have to be deep. Just don't suggest the classics...