Our second official reading retreat happened the first weekend of October this year. I was banking on it being a beautiful, crisp fall weekend, but Mother Nature decided to make it 80° in Wisconsin 🤣 However, that didn’t stop us from having the best weekend! We had 41 attendees from 10 different states and everyone walked away with new books, new friends, and their cups filled 🥰
Friday Night
As people came into our event room, they found their assigned seat and started opening up their swag bags. The bags were filled with so many goodies (think cozy, bookish weekend essentials), but my favorite part? Each bag had THREE FREE BOOKS from publishers inside! 🤯 I’m still in disbelief about it. Our attendees received books from Celadon Books, Atria Books, and Bramble Romance. In addition to the free books, attendees also got raffle tickets to enter our ‘Local Author Giveaway.‘ We had 6 authors donate books and 12 people walked away with MORE free books! 🙌🏼
Friday night is also about fun! From conversation cards on the table to help create discussions to the photo booth and props, everyone is getting to know each other and starting to cultivate relationships.
Saturday Morning
We had optional yoga at 9am on Saturday morning and about 15 of us decided to take advantage! No photo evidence of that (and we’d like to keep it that way 😉). One of the perks of it being 80° in October is that the pool at our resort was still open! So many people were excited to lay out in the sun for some final summer vibes and they got it 💁🏻♀️
Lakeside Books Mobile Bookstore ended up not coming to our retreat, but we’re so excited for them- they opened a brick + mortar store in downtown Lake Geneva! The weekend of book·cation coincided with their grand opening. 🎉 If you’re ever in the area, make sure to check them out!
Saturday Afternoon
One of my personal highlights of this retreat was having best-selling author Layne Fargo join us! Layne is a local Chicago author who wrote the amazing book ‘The Favorites.’ I got to treat her to lunch beforehand and then at 2pm we gathered in our room for a book discussion.
I led a conversation with Layne about her writing process, her inspiration, and the book. We then had time for audience questions and then Layne signed everyone’s books 🤩 This was so incredibly special. When I created the idea of book·cation I knew I wanted to always support local communities and authors, but to have the opportunity to meet and chat with a best-selling author and to give our attendees that opportunity…someone pinch me!
Saturday Night
For our Saturday dinner, everyone sat by favorite genre! We ended up having 2 tables for mystery/thriller, 2 tables for fiction (we combined historical + contemporary) then 1 for romance and 1 for fantasy. Each table had a discussion card with genre-specific questions to kick off conversation, as well as a new card.
After our last retreat I heard people say that they would’ve loved to have heard what other tables were talking about. (Because let’s face it, some of us like multiple genres!) SO I decided to have each table write down their top 5 book recs for people who want to get into that genre. If you’re interested in seeing it, click here!
After we finished dinner, we did our Blind Book Exchange! It was completely optional, but most people participated. All you had to do was bring a book – maybe one you recently read and loved or maybe a favorite of all time- and wrap it up. Then when I said ‘go,’ everyone came up to the table and chose a new book to unwrap and take home 🥰
Sunday Morning
We never have anything official on the itinerary for Sunday morning, but I did invite people to join me for the breakfast buffet so we could get one last chance to chat together. It was very informal, but a great way to send us off back to reality 🤪 After breakfast I sat in the gorgeous lobby for an hour to finish my book before heading home; it was perfection.
Creating this space for readers has brought me so much joy! I truly can’t wait for you to join us in 2026. And before you talk yourself out of it 😉 you deserve this! You deserve uninterrupted reading time. You deserve a relaxing weekend focused on what YOU want. And you deserve to find some new, bookish friends who want to talk at length about books with you! You deserve book·cation, friend. 😘
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