Tomorrow is World Sickle Cell Day, but the only way to truly make an impact on SCD awareness is to make the efforts ongoing. We've shared a lot of ideas over the past few years about how to do just that, and in celebration of WSCD 2018, we're comin' at you with another one: Start your own book club. 

But not just any book club. Fill your reading list with sickle cell-related fiction and nonfiction and your membership roster with warriors and non warriors. We've even compiled a few selection options to get you started. Once you've settled on those preliminaries, it's time to solicit input from founding members to decide how many people you'd like to have in your club and how often you all should meet. Will you gather monthly? Quarterly? Bi-monthly? Who will host each meeting and where? Will you rotate members' houses or meet in a public place? How will you determine what books to read next? 

To kick things off, the book club's founder can select the first book; or, they can send a survey with a narrowed down list of choices to current members, and read the winning pick. Then, when it's time for the first meeting, that session's host/hostess can lead the group through spirited discussion, keeping the following topics in mind: 

1) Overall thoughts on the book
2) How effective the book was conveying its message
3) Whether anyone learned anything new
4) Themes/motifs, etc. 

Picking up a book club journal will help with discussion, as well as provide a fun record of all the books you and your group read, making it easy for everyone to share recommendations with friends and family. 

For more information about book clubs, check out the website for National Reading Group Month. The actual month is October, but this resource is available 365.