Welcome to the twentieth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade--a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is 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.

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: Moose
Author: Stephanie Klein
Start Date: June 30th
Post Dates: August 17
(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 Moose: From Amazon: "Whether Klein is describing her life as a chubby adolescent camper--getting weighed on a meat scale, petting past curfew, and "chunky dunking" in the lake--or what it's like now as a fit mother, having one-sided conversations with her newborn twins about the therapy they'll one day need, this hilarious yet grippingly vulnerable book will remind you what it was like to feel like an outsider, to desperately seek the right outfit, the right slang, the best comeback, or whatever that unattainable something was that would finally make you fit in." Not an infertility-related book, but it will be a great jumping board to a discussion on body as it relates to infertility.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. You'll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Moose.)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (below this post)
Weebles Wobblog
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
The Road Less Travelled
Baby Making Journey
All Things Deb
Trying for a Baby
The Dragondreamer's Lair

Even if haven't read Moose, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else's critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The current group chooses the next book. The 21st tour will be It Sucked, and Then I Cried... by Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce). Obviously not an IF book, but relates to blogging. I've seen so many people say they're reading it that it made sense to read it together. If not sure if her m/c is mentioned in the book, but it is an interesting story AND postpartum depression affects IF women 4 times more than the general population. So an important topic too as it relates to PPD and post-adoption depression.

The Details: Tour #21 will start August 18. Participants will read It Sucked, and Then I Cried... by Heather Armstrong. On or before September 30th, everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you by October 2nd. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on October 5th. I'll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

Though the book club is usually closed to those in the ALI community, I think that postpartum depression is a topic that needs wider discussion. Therefore, I'm opening this book to the larger community with sensitivity in posting. If you have a friend who wishes to join along for this book, they can join along too.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #21, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you'd like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn't have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you're a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour's participant list. The participants on the It Sucked, And Then I Cried... book tour will choose the book for tour #22.

Happy reading.