Our First Book Club Meet Up | Chapters & Chai

Last Wednesday (23rd July), Chapters & Chai had its very first meet up! Thirty of you came to join us at Waterstones Worthing for our introductory chapter of our brand new book club. 

I truly cannot believe all the enthusiasm and kindness this book club has been met with! It is so lovely knowing there are so many book lovers in Worthing (and from further afield) who will come together once a month to discuss all things books, and that there’s even more of you who want to attend next time. 

Here’s what we got up to at Chapters & Chai Chapter One.

Prior to the meet up, my friend Saskia and I spent hours sitting on my living room floor prepping your goodie bags. This involved stamping 22 letters over and over again on 30 gift bags, threading hundreds of beads onto elastic for our bracelets, an emergency trip to Hobby Craft when said elastic ran out, and lots of tea and snacks to keep us going.
   We were kindly sent 30 beautiful notebooks from Mellow Apricot Studio for you all to use as Reading Journals, and you all seemed to love them as much as I do!
   And of course, I added some tea samples from Bird & Blend Tea - because it wouldn’t be Chapters & Chai without a cuppa. 

The lovely Waterstones booksellers, Rayah and Marina, got everyone settled down with snacks and refreshments, and it was time to me to use my big girl voice to welcome everyone to the book club - and although public speaking is not my forte, having so many friendly people there was a huge help. 

We had a few activities on the tables to get everyone engaged; a ‘Guess the Title’ quiz, a ‘ Book Club Members Bingo’, and more of a getting-to-know-you sheet for me to learn more about the genres you enjoy, etc. 

I really enjoyed popping round to everyone’s tables to chat and get to know everyone (but I will say now that I am terrible with names and faces so apologies in advance if I stare blankly at you trying to remember!), and then before long it was time to vote on our September book. 

There’s a blog post live now detailing the six options - so if you didn’t get a vote, now’s your chance!

We were all having such a nice evening that we did end up running over on our time, but I’ll take that as a positive sign that everyone wanted to stay. Before we said goodbye though, everyone was able to purchase a copy of August’s book Remarkably Bright Creatures with a £2 discount, and shop for any other books that caught their eye, and then it really was time to go. 

I am so grateful to everyone who attended our first chapter, and for everyone else who has expressed any sort of interest or sent me a kind message of encouragement over the last month or so. I have never been a particularly outgoing person, but all the enthusiasm and love has really helped and has definitely given me a bit of confidence going forward. 

If you’d like to join us at the next chapter of Chapters & Chai, be sure to sign up to our mailing list and/or follow our socials so you don’t miss out on ticket updates! There is a lot of demand that we will try our best to meet, but you might want to be quick when the tickets for August go live. 

Thank you again to everyone who came along, sent me a message, or helped me with prep. And of course thank you to Waterstones for making this possible!

Happy reading, and see you at book club!
Kee