I Started a Book Club. Kinda.

I started a local book club.

Kinda.

There are no meetings. No reading schedule. No folding chairs arranged in a circle. Nobody has to finish a chapter before Tuesday.

It started with two books.

They were books I had already read and enjoyed enough to think about afterward, and eventually written reviews of for my website. They had given me something useful, which is probably the highest compliment I can give a book.

Finding Spanish Books in Yucatán

Then I discovered Spanish editions at a local bookshop here in Yucatán.

I bought them for a friend because I thought he would actually read them. More importantly, I thought he might get something from them.

When I gave him the first book, he asked me to sign and date it.

That surprised me.

I hadn’t written the book, after all.

He explained that it was a local custom when giving someone a book—a small record of where the book had come from and when it had entered your life.

So I signed it.

And dated it.

Suddenly the book felt different.

It wasn’t just a copy I had picked up at the bookshop anymore. It had a little history attached to it.

How Sharing Books Creates Conversation

He read it.

Then we talked about it.

That was the part I liked most.

Something that had once existed only between an author and me had expanded. Now those ideas belonged to a conversation between the two of us.

So I gave him the second book.

He read that one too.

We discussed it too.

And somewhere along the way, I decided these books shouldn’t come back to me.

They should keep going.

The Rule of This Informal Book Club

The only rule of my extremely unofficial book club is this:

When you finish the book, give it to someone you think will actually read it and might use something from it.

Maybe that person signs and dates it too.

Maybe they talk about it with someone.

Then they pass it along again.

I like imagining one of those books making its way slowly through Yucatán, accumulating names and dates inside the front cover.

Not hundreds of books.

Just one book moving from one person to another.

One reader at a time.

Passing Along Something Useful

There is something satisfying about that.

We spend a lot of time trying to improve the world through large gestures. We build websites. Start businesses. Publish things. Create courses. Make plans for reaching hundreds or thousands of people.

There is nothing wrong with any of that.

But sometimes helping someone is much smaller.

You read something that helps you.

You think of someone else who might benefit from it.

You walk into a local bookshop and find a copy in his language.

You hand him the book.

Then you talk about what it meant.

That’s it.

No mailing list.

No membership fee.

No algorithm.

Just one human being passing something useful to another.

The Quiet Fulfillment of Sharing Books

Starting this little book chain made me feel surprisingly good.

Not because I started anything important.

Maybe because I didn’t.

I simply put something worthwhile into somebody else’s hands and trusted him to decide where it should go next.

There is a quiet kind of fulfillment in that.

We don’t always have to change the world ourselves.

Sometimes we can just pass along something that changed us.