Marching with the Barren Bitches Book Brigade — Tour Twenty-Three

Whoa.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a book club meeting.

There hasn’t been one since 2009, but I decided to resurrect the club for Lori’s book, The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption.  So to everyone who has participated in one of these in the past, welcome back.  And to everyone who is seeing this for the first time, read on.

This post serves as the master list for the 23rd tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyone can jump aboard — it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption
Author: Lori Holden
Start Date: April 6
Question Due: May 5
Question List Sent Out: May 6
Post Date: May 9

(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about future tours.)

About The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: While this book will appeal the most to those either in the adoption process, parenting after adoption, or birth parents, there is actually some pretty solid parenting advice for anyone who is parenting or waiting to parent.  As it states on Amazon, “Prior to 1990, fewer than 5% of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, 90% or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering.”  This book is a guide to navigating open adoption.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade

(The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On May 9th, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on May 5th. The list is currently open)

• Stirrup Queens
• Bereaved and Blessed
• CD1
• Life from Here
• Queen of the Slipstream
• Too Many Fish to Fry
• An Engineer Becomes a Mom
• Baby Smiling in Back Seat
• The Maybe Baby
• Stumbling Gracefully
• The Years Are Getting Shorter
• Birds and the Beas
• The Sound of Hope
• Today is the Day They Give Babies Away
• PoemFish
• Production, Not Reproduction
• Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. EST on May 5th.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption by May 5th (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on May 5th (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on May 6th, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on May 9th, people will begin to post their entry. I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).