My book club loves a theme. Every gathering brings a coordinated potluck of food and refreshments that aligns with whatever we’ve chosen to read for the month. When we first picked Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, we immediately started tossing around ideas for homemade bread and other foods and drinks made entirely from scratch. Because we’re all busy adults with jobs and, unfortunately, lives outside of book club, we did dial back on the manual labor and put together a meeting that was easy for everyone to participate in while also staying on-theme.
If, like us, it takes twelve suggested meeting dates to find one that works for everybody in book club, but you still love to commit to a theme, this post is for you.
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Yesteryear Book Club At a Glance:
- Theme: homemade and back-to-basics
- Activity: homemade butter
- Food: cozy potluck
- Discussion level: very debate-friendly
- Prep level: low
Yesteryear is a perfect book club book because it’ll get your group talking without fail. Part of its draw is that the narrator is unreliable—and straight-up unlikeable—so you’ll spend half of the time debating whether the series of events unfolded the way she claims and which details she probably left out. The book is packed with moral gray areas, and even if everyone ultimately agrees, there are enough wild decisions and questionable motivations to keep the conversation going.
Here’s what my book club did for our Yesteryear gathering that was fun, engaging, and delicious!
Food & Drink
We always do a potluck for our gatherings so whoever is hosting doesn’t have to worry about providing everything for the entire group. Usually the hostess makes a main (it’s just easier to do in her own home), but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule, just usually how things shake out. Our group chat is chaotic a week or two before our gathering, with ladies figuring out what they’re bringing based on dietary preferences and their own busy schedules.
This time, we loosely leaned into the book’s homemade, back-to-basics atmosphere rather than trying to make every dish a literal reference to the story. Our meeting also had to be rescheduled at the last minute thanks to some truly insane thunderstorms, so convenience won out in a few places—and honestly, that’s part of the beauty of a potluck. Some people cooked from scratch, some grabbed something easy, and we still ended up with a table full of delicious food that felt perfectly cozy for the theme.
Here’s what ended up on our table:
- Marry Me chicken with egg noodles
- Chicken salad sandwiches
- Andouille sausage
- Smashed potatoes
- Boursin with jam and crackers
- Homemade banana bread
- Watermelon
Activity
Normally, we don’t do an activity and just talk the whole time (mostly not about the book).
For Yesteryear, though, we decided to stay on-theme and make homemade butter. What I thought was going to be a tedious chore ended up being really easy, and it gave us something to do with our hands while we actually talked about the book. One of our friends decorated all of the little jars with *Yesteryear-*related drawings, which made the activity even more on-theme. I had the butter I made every morning on my pre-workout toast for a week!
To make your own butter: Pour heavy whipping cream into a jar, seal it tightly, and shake vigorously for about 10–15 minutes, or until the cream separates into butter and buttermilk.
After separation, drain the buttermilk and rinse/knead the butter in cold water if you want it to keep longer. If you want salted butter, add a little salt before you start shaking. Stop a few minutes earlier and—you guessed it—you’ve made whipped cream instead!
Questions to Spark a Debate:
The best part of discussing Yesteryear is that there aren’t many easy answers. The book touches on social media authenticity, children in influencer content, the tradwife movement, marriage, ambition, and the difference between the life we live and the one we present online.
If you don’t know where to start the conversation, here are some questions that are sure to get things going:
- How has reading this novel changed the way you view real-life influencer culture on which Natalie is based, especially #tradwives?
- Natalie is the family’s dominant breadwinner, while Caleb takes on a much more passive role than their “traditional” image suggests. How does that contradiction affect their marriage and family dynamic?
- Which character do you think bears the most responsibility for how everything unfolds?
- What do you think of Natalie and Reena’s relationship, and who do you think was happier in the long run?
- Do you think that the ending was realistic or idealistic?
I hope you have as much fun reading, debating, and picking apart Yesteryear as we did. It’s one of those books that gives you plenty to disagree about, which is exactly what I want from a good book club pick. Add some comfort food, shake up a jar of homemade butter, and prepare for at least one conversation that gets far more heated than anyone expected.
Cheers, and happy reading!
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