Dear Reader

For the last few years, I've been a subscriber to Dear Reader, a free online book club. As a subscriber, each weekday morning I receive an email with a 5-minute excerpt from that week's featured selection. I subscribe to both the fiction and non-fiction clubs, but there are several other categories, too.

It's a wonderful way to be exposed to books that one might not otherwise come across. And if that week's selection doesn't appeal to you, all you have to do is hit delete.

But even when I choose not to read the week's book selection, I always read the daily "Dear Reader" essay which precedes each excerpt. The essays are written by Suzanne Beecher, the Florida woman who owns the email books clubs. It's a ritual for me to read her daily message with my morning coffee. She's a down-to-earth woman who really does read her own email. Drop her a line and you're sure to get a response, even though she has hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world.

And now she has a Dear Reader blog, featuring those daily essays. Check it out and check out the book clubs (the link is on the blog). They provide a wonderful daily 5-minute escape.