“What’s better than chocolate and books?” Mrs. Fain, the school librarian, asks. The members of Fossil’s book club nod their heads in agreement. Everyone who joins the Chocolate Book Club has at least one thing in common: the extreme love of books and reading.

In a typical meeting, there are about four conversations going on at once, and at least one person has an open book in front of them, whether they are reading it at the moment or not. Topics range from homework assignments, Writer’s Guild Meetings, lunch foods, the upcoming NaNoWriMo, French songs, and, of course, books. After waiting for everyone who normally arrives to take a seat, Mrs. Fain starts with announcements about the goings on at the library. The staff and parent volunteers at the library always try to create fun events and themes for national bookish celebrations, and ideas are often brainstormed by book club members. Teen Read Week is coming up October 18-24, and Mrs. Fain hopes to create something that will get students excited about reading.

Following announcements, where the topics tend to drift away from the school library and focus on people’s personal lives or future events, like the annual Holidays at Hogwarts party, or the characters students are dressing up as for Halloween, the discussion turns to the book everyone is currently reading. Who likes it, who does not, and how far everyone is in the book usually gets the ball rolling, though it is sometimes difficult for them to get into talking about different aspects of a book.

Choosing a book that everyone can agree to read is by far the hardest part of every meeting, occasionally because no one has any suggestions, but more often than not, because everyone has different reading tastes. A few members are die-hard fantasy fans, and tend to turn their noses up at anything else, while some have started to grow out of the Young Adult genre and enjoy reading non-fiction and classics more than the average teen. While the decision at the beginning of the year was Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare, many students never got around to reading it, and some of them stopped because they could not really get into the book, it was a unanimous choice to start The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams during the meeting on Friday, October 9.

Chocolate Book Club got off to a rocky start this school year, as Mrs. Fain could not be present the entire meeting, and book club participants had to try their hand at leading everyone in discussion, a feat even Mrs. Fain has occasional difficulty achieving. The recent budget cuts got rid of the assistant librarian position, moving Ms. Jin from the library to the West Wing office, and forcing her to leave Chocolate Book Club. Without any trained adult watching over the library during lunchtime, Mrs. Fain had to learn how to split her time between there and the book club meetings that take place in the library conference room at the beginning of the year. At first, she did not even offer a book club meeting during A lunch for the freshmen.

Now, however, after things have settled down and parent volunteers are able to monitor the library during lunch, freshmen can join book club as well, though their meetings are on Thursdays instead of Fridays. When asked about her decision to start about the freshmen meeting, Mrs. Fain said, “I want to have a group in which people who really love reading can share that passion. I don’t want to not offer that to other grades.” It is also a great way for her to get to know some members of the freshmen class, and have people to filter into the B lunch group next school year, because most of the current sophomores stopped attending meetings, and the majority of the upperclassmen group is seniors.

Despite the chaos of meetings, the conflicts between preferred genres and the changes in faculty, students say the best part about Chocolate Book Club is being able to read the same book so they can talk about it together, while enjoying a Hershey’s Kiss or two (or five). Book club is a fun way to get to know new people, introduce yourself to new books, and completely geek out about favorite characters with friends. The next Chocolate Book Club meeting is on Monday, October 12 (because of the Friday schedule), and book club typically meets on Thursdays during A lunch, or Fridays during B lunch in the media center conference room.