Reading books and aging well

Among the local entities that partner with the Mullis Community Senior Center is our San Juan Island Public Library. The library’s outreach and technology coordinator, Wendy Waxman Kern, facilitates the Mullis Center book club.

Also, beginning May 4, Waxman-Kern will lead an 8-week reading and discussion group on Aging Mastery. Through the Mullis Center book club, I read books I may not have chosen, or even heard of. I just finished reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, the book we will discuss on April 10. I loved how the book sees contemporary times, including the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic through the eyes of an indigenous woman.

The book club meets via zoom on the second Monday of the month at 1:15 p.m. If you are interested, contact Wendy at 360-378-2798 to get the zoom link.

We just voted on the books we will be reading throughout the year:

April 10: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

May 8: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

June 12: The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

July 10: The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

August 14: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

September 11: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

October 9: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim MicheleRichardson

November 13: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

December 11: A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel

Waxman-Kern is also the person to contact about the Aging Mastery reading and discussion group. The group will meet for 8 weeks, May 4– June 22 on Thursdays from 2 to 3 p.m. via Zoom. Topics will include: Gratitude and Mindfulness, Health and Well-Being, Finances and Future Planning, Connections and Community, Learning and Creativity, and Legacy and Purpose.

Once you register you can pick up your Aging Mastery packet at the library. The packets, provided by the San Juan Community Foundation, include: the Aging Mastery Playbook your guide to aging well with inspiration and practical tips, Exercise DVDs Tai Chi Easy and Go4Life, Activity Cards that prompt you to take small actions that may return big results, a weekly check-in note pad, and a magnet with a Carl Sagan quote: “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent.”