Summer can be rough for book groups. Vacations deplete group numbers and those who remain steadfast don’t even get the proverbial lousy t-shirt. You should take this, well… sitting down. Why not take the group on its own armchair tour with a round of travel books?

There are some fun choices available now. I highly recommend State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey. It’ s a thoughtful, funny, often insightful collection of essays, one for each of the fifty states, by fifty interesting writers. Contributors include Jhumpa Lahiri, Tony Horwitz, Jonathan Franzen, Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, Anthony Bourdain, Louise Erdrich, Ann Patchett, Myla Goldberg, Rick Moody, Susan Choi, and many other great up and coming writers. To top it all off, the book contains some interesting statistics about the fifty states.

A much-better-than-average celebrity book is Jerry Camarillo Dunn’s My Favorite Place on Earth: Celebrated People Share Their Travel Discoveries. Dunn works in interviews with folks from the Dalai Lama to Jerry Seinfeld, Buzz Aldrin to Morgan Freeman, James Taylor to Tom Brokaw, a total of 75 celebrity travelers. He also raids National Geographic’s vaults to provide background information about the destinations they mention.

Or consider combining the reading of a classic with Novel Destinations, a book by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon. It covers places like Jane Austen’s Bath, Oscar Wilde’s London, or Kafka’s Prague. It also has coverage of literary museums and festivals.

Whichever of these books you pick, supplement it with information from your own lives. For State by State, compare your impressions of your home state with those of the essayist in the book. If you try My Favorite Place on Earth, come prepared with lists of your own favorite places. And if you choose Novel Destinations, talk about the most vivid settings you’ve experienced in books or your own literary travels. In any case, you’ll get good discussion and a fun travel experience without breaking up the group. Enjoy the journey!

Back on August 22nd last year I suggested the title Peace by Richard Bausch for a book discussion. I even included some suggested book discussion questions for you to use. I am happy to see that the book has just won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2009. The award honors the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war. The $5,000 award and citation, donated by author W. Y. Boyd II, recognizes the service of American veterans and encourages the writing and publishing of outstanding war-related fiction. I think this is a good example of a title that has the potential to attract some men to your book discussions.

A couple of days ago, I took a peek at the web site of my old stamping grounds, the Oak Park Public Library, where I began my library career way back in the 60s.  I was pleased to note the library has organized a book lovers’ appreciation society called Oak Park Readers.  There are no restrictions or registration.  Staff members encourage local residents to “read all you want,” then come to the library for a book-sharing party.

At the party, staff members welcome the attendees by sharing some of their own favorites, then invite the participants to take the floor and talk about the books they love.  After this time of book-sharing, everyone drinks, eats, mingles, and discusses books with other like-minded individuals.

The staff promises everyone will leave with a reading list and a fresh outlook, and possibly one or two new friends.  The parties are held periodically on Thursday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00, and information about past parties, including book lists and photos, can be found on the library’s web site, www.oppl.org.

Great idea, don’t you think?

In a past post I mentioned that my colleague, Linda, and I were preparing to book-talk some book group suggestions to a women’s group in Seattle. I thought that I would share our list.

We wrote many of the annotations, but honestly also adapted a few from NoveList and used some from our Book Group Collection list.

Here is the list:

From our booktalk

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian (2007)

Laurel, a social worker, encounters a homeless man with a history of mental illness and a box of secret photos. After his death, Laurel pieces together his story, which includes characters descended from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. A terrific companion read with Gatsby. 

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (2009)

A Nigerian refugee released from a British detention center seeks out the Englishwoman she met on a fateful day on a beach in her home country. A powerful novel narrated by two unforgettable voices.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam (2006)

Sir Edward Feathers, aka Old Filth, retires from his life as a lawyer and judge in Hong King with his wife Betty. But when Betty dies, the past that Edward has tried to avoid starts to resurface, revealing the complicated man beneath his unruffled demeanor. The New York Times called it “pitch-perfect.”

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos (2009)

In Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, the Jones family siblings, whose mother disappeared in a tornado years before, reconnect when their father dies in this satisfying drama about small-town life, loss and redemption. From the Seattle author who wrote Broken for You.

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2009)

Thirty-eight-year old Portia Nathan, a Princeton University admission officer, must decide whether to confront the truth when a life-altering decision from her past resurfaces. Kirkus called it a “fine, moving example of traditional realistic fiction.”

Secret Son by Laila Lalami (2009)

Youssef El Mekki life with his mother in a Casablanca slums is upended when he discovers that his father is alive after all and a wealthy businessman. What life will Youssef choose and what will he risk is his desire for a better life?

The Family Man by Elinor Lipman (2009)

Henry Archer lives a quiet, solitary life until he is reunited with Thalia, a stepdaughter he hadn’t seen for twenty years. Soon Thalia moves into his basement and takes a job posing as the girlfriend of a B-list movie actor, and Henry takes on managing her career, meeting a handsome man of his own, and discovering the joy of family.  Lovable, charming characters.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan (2007)

Managing a failed seafood restaurant in a run-down New England mall just before Christmas, Manny DeLeon coordinates a challenging final shift of mutinous staff members, an effort that is complicated by his love for a waitress, a pregnant girlfriend, and an elusive holiday gift.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009)

Skeeter, a young white woman just out of college, convinces Aibileen, a black maid, to help gather the stories of “the help” in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. The risk is greater than either imagined, yet 12 women agree to talk to Skeeter. Publishers Weekly called Stockett’s first novel “assured and layered, full of heart and history.” 

 More good novels to try

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery (2006)

In rapidly westernizing 19th century Japan, the elegant daughter of a tea ceremony grandmaster takes in an orphaned American girl and together they navigate the changes in their lives in the venerable old city of Kyoto.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (2007)

From the author of The History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In comes a deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading.

Away by Amy Bloom (2007)

Lillian Leyb comes to America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, but when word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on journey from New York to Seattle, and then to Alaska.

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner (1984)

Recounts the holiday of Edith Hope, meek, unmarried, and thirty-nine, who, on the mend from a disastrous love affair, becomes intimately involved with her fellow guests at the Swiss Hotel du Lac.  In a New York Times review, Anne Tyler called it “wryly realistic.” Winner of the Booker Prize.

The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (1999)

A novel set in Copenhagen, Paris and Dresden in the 1920s, introduces a man who discovers he is a woman, and the woman who will do anything for him, in a tale of love and marriage in the midst of fundamental crisis. Based on the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who had the first sexual reassignment surgery, this is the story of struggling to transform one’s life. An excellent selection for book groups that enjoyed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. 
 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009)

Henry Lee, a Chinese American widower, reflects on his adolescence in Seattle during WWII and on his first love, Keiko, a Japanese American whose family was interned during the war. This debut is riveting portrait of prejudice, familial expectations and how the persecution of the Japanese affected our local communities.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (2007)

Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, which unearths allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love. “This novel’s firm, steady, even beautiful voice proclaims the completeness of the soul when personal and global issues are conjoined,” commented a reviewer in Booklist. 

The Cure for Grief by Nellie Hermann (2009)

Deeply bonded to her three older brothers and in awe of her father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, young Ruby is shocked when her eldest brother is abruptly taken away to a hospital, where he changes into a person she barely recognizes. The Washington Post said: “Nellie Hermann’s first novel is proof that in the hands of a skillful writer, the most familiar themes can still surprise us with their potency and truth.”

A Free Life by Ha Jin (2007)

Nan, a political science student at Brandies, and his wife, Pingping, struggle to get their son to the U.S. from China after the Tiananmen massacre. Nan tries to balance his dream to be a poet with the practicalities of providing security for his family. Simple, direct prose examines what a free life means.

The Girls by Lori Lansens (2005)

At the approach of her 30th birthday, Rose Darlen attempts to pen her autobiography while remembering the joys and challenges of her life with her conjoined twin sister, Ruby. Unusual situations with extraordinary characters who are exploring independence and togetherness.

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee (2009)

Hired by the wealthy Chen family as a piano instructor, Claire Pendleton is seduced by the social life of Hong Kong’s expatriate community and begins an affair with Will Truesdale, an enigmatic Englishman with a devastating past. A Booklist review said the complex characters drive a “rich and intimate look at what happens to people under extraordinary circumstances.”

They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell (1937)

This account of Elizabeth Morison’s death by influenza in 1918, told from the perspectives of her sons and husband, is a spare and eloquent achievement.

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (2007)

After sixty years of living in the upstate New York town of Thomaston, Louis Charles and his wife of forty years, Sarah, prepare for a trip to Italy to visit Louis’ childhood friend, an artist who had fled his hometown many years earlier. A classic Russo tale of small-town life and the ways that family and place shape us.

The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters (2009)

Feeling like an outsider while visiting her ancestral family in Kyoto, fourteen-year-old Japanese American Sarah Rexford begins to discern cultural mandates about boundaries and learns a painful secret about how her grandmother was forced to give up a daughter to another branch of the family. In a starred review, Booklist said, “This is a novel of extraordinary beauty.”

Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z by Debra Weinstein (2004)

Delighted when she lands a job with the eminent Flower Poet Z., Annabelle G., an aspiring young poet, soon realizes that she has acquired the mentor from hell instead of finding a meaningful relationship. A smart, witty spin on the university poetry scene.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (1961)

Unhappiness in the Connecticut suburbs in the 1950’s is incisively portrayed in a novel still resonant after 45 years in print.

And a nonfiction title we can’t resist

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (2006)

A novelist shows how to look at words, sentences, paragraphs, character, dialogue and details to fully appreciate literature. Although the title may appear to target writers, Prose’s approach to careful reading can be relished by readers everywhere. Includes a list of “Books to be read immediately.”

Here are a few more lists of books to read this summer,  courtesy of NPR.

True to form, Nancy Pearl’s picks  are an eclectic mix, including a teen novel (The Disreputable History of  Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart and a graphic novel (The Photographer  by Emmanuel Guibert and others).  Among her other suggestions: The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles, The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway,  What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, and an older title,  A Far Cry from Kensington, by the wonderful Muriel Spark. Simon & Schuster has a good discussion guide for What Happened to Anna K. and offers some ideas for enhancing your discussion as well.  Serve vodka, for example, which, come to think of it, might also facilitate one of the other suggestions, reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

The Independent Booksellers picks include The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa,  Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears,  A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, and Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen.  I found discussion guides for Atmospheric Disturbances and The Housekeeper and the Professor on BookBrowse, and  for A Reliable Wife on Reading Group Guides.

I love the publishing world. You just never know what’s going between the covers next. Well, the next bestseller is going to be short on plot development, character depth, and description, but it’ll have a zippy pace.

Penguin is going to publish a book from two college students that will summarize all the classics using the trendy and tweetacular mode of 140 characters. Read more about it here.

After chuckling over my morning coffee I began to wonder how this little book would impact the Cliffs’ Notes trade. I don’t think students will be able to use Twitterature to skate by on a final.

And then I mused how it might be used by those folks who constantly moan about not finishing the book for book group. If everyone reads the tweeted version of Jane Eyre, there won’t be much to mull over.

Morose girl meets moody guy. Guy has crazy wife. Wife likes fire. Fire destroys marriage & guy’s eyes. Morose girl & moody guy live HEA.

140 exactly. Don’t believe me? Follow Marianliberryan on Twitter.

The person who picked the book didn’t make the meeting. Strike one.

The book proved to be surprisingly difficult to obtain. Several of us couldn’t track down a copy in a timely way. Strike two.

As discussion limped to a start, there was too much awkward silence. Our book, which shall remain nameless (but its Nobel-winning author’s name rhymes with HELLO, as in HELLO!? What were we thinking?) had a satirical tone and an unlikable narrator, the kind of book that is a challenge in the best of circumstances. Here, it drew only frustrated dismissals. The only sparks that flew in this conversation were those showering off the axes that were being ground. Strike three, and we were out.

We did poorly by our classic author (whose name rhymes with smell-o). His work honestly deserves better. What could my group have done about our problem? Here are four suggestions:

1) Fix the Selection Process

When readers take turns picking the book, your group will get some inspired surprises, but will also get more duds. If too many ill-fitted books are coming from your selection process, consider setting some standards, discussing selections more carefully, or instituting a formal nomination and voting process.

2) Read the Book. Attend the Meeting.

These two guidelines may be the only rules book groups need. My group was guilty of violating them, and on this night, we paid the price. Too few of us had read the book, and the person who should have been ready to facilitate discussion couldn’t make the meeting.

3) Watch that Axe Grinding

An axe is too big and dangerous to swing in the middle of a group. Wield a scalpel instead when you don’t like the book. Cut at the damaged pieces instead of hacking the whole thing to shreds. If you practice these surgical discussion skills, you might find that the patient can be saved.

4) Who Will Speak for this Book?

If your meeting goes sour like ours did (and if you book group meets for long enough, one eventually will), remember that you can opt out. Don’t add insult to injury. If very few people have read the book, and no one can speak for it, and particularly if the person who recommended it is not in attendance, you might do better to simply take a pass.

I’m not saying you should avoid discussing controversial books. Sometimes it’s enlightening to discuss why a book doesn’t work. But when poor attendance, poor completion, and unhappiness with the book combine, it’s a recipe for trouble. Spend the evening discussing other reading, exploring ideas for future selections, and re-affirming your commitments to the group instead. This limits the damage a mistaken selection does to your group and leaves hope that your members can still go home with smiling faces.

A few weeks ago my mother-in-law sent me a copy of the newsletter from the library where she works (The Urbana Free Library in Urbana, IL).  In it there was an article about the library’s recent Big Read event, with information about a series of programs which I’d like to share with Book Group Buzz readers, since it may provide some ideas for book and film discussions in other parts of the country.

The CU Big Read 2009, as it was called, was hosted by the Champaign Public Library and The Urbana Free Library from March 28 to April 30.  Library users were urged to read and talk about the iconic detective novel, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, and then attend a pair of film showings introduced by P. Gregory Springer, a local critic and columnist.

The films were Murder, My Sweet, the 1944 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, Farewell, My Lovely, and Gun Crazy, a 1950 flick based on a short story by MacKinley Kantor.  Later in the month, a keynote address by Professor Pat Gill from the University of Illinois was held.  This talk, titled Film Noir: Dangerous Men and Deadly Dames, looked at the film noir genre in general as well as the film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon.

The Big Read wrapped up with a concert by the acclaimed local group, the Boneyard Jazz Quintet, which entertained attendees with tunes from the era of The Maltese Falcon.

The Maltese Falcon has long had a following among both lovers of detective novels and film noir aficiandos.  If you enjoy this particular genre and have been thinking about mixing reading and discussion with films and/or music, this could be the right recipe for your next event!

Here in the Midwest, there is currently great excitement about the recent opening of the Modern Wing at The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC).  One of the ways the museum is spotlighting this momentous occasion is by inviting its book club members to read My Love Affair with Modern Art, by Katharine Kuh, the woman behind the development of  the AIC’s  modern art collection.  If you have an interest in learning more about modern art, or are planning to visit the Modern Wing on your next trip to Chicago (possibly the ALA annual conference next month?),  this is definitely a title worth checking out — and perhaps you’ll be inspired to use it as the basis for one of your next discussions!

Did your book group love The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society? Now you can enter the Take Your Book Group to Guernsey sweepstakes. The winner and five friends will visit Guernsey from Friday October 2nd through Monday October 5th, 2009.  Activities will include a joint book discussion with a UK book group and an island tour.

I just finished Stitches: a memoir by David Small, which was all the buzz at BookExpo. This graphic novel memoir cinematically captures Small’s horrific childhood and adolescence with his parents in 1950s Detroit.

His father, a taciturn doctor rarely home for dinner, and emotionally repressed mother, who slammed around the house for no discernable reason, ruled the house with their silences and outbursts. But as the secrets deepen and young David lies in the crosshairs, the images and striking revelations build to a deafening cresendo.

Stitches is powerful in its spare, black-and-white approach to a painful past. The book gets its title from a surgery that David receives that leaves him nearly speechless, a surgery that his mother put off for three years so she could buy a new car and house appliances.

I don’t want to give too much away, because the story and the accompanying images speak much better than simple prose. This is a book to experience, whose shocks you need to read and absorb for yourself.

Since Stitches doesn’t come out until September, you can watch this book trailer for a sneak peek.

ReadingGroupGuides has published the results of its 2009 Reader Survey, which was conducted in March and April. The 62-question survey was completed by more than 6,000 members of book groups. Here are some highlights:

• Most popular place to meet: members’ homes, on a rotating basis
• Most common numbers of members in a group: 5-9
• Most common way of selecting books to read: group vote
• Most used resource for identifying possible books: recommendations from friends.
• Most popular category of book: bestsellers, followed closely by general fiction, then award winners.
• Most frequently used media source to learn about books: local newspapers, followed closely by the New York Times. 
• Most frequently visited Web site to learn about books: Amazon
• Most common book group complaint: the discussion does not stay on track.

Deadly Pleasures magazine and Mystery News magazine just announced the 2009 nominations for the annual Barry Award for various “bests” in crime and mystery fiction. To see the complete list, go to http://www.blackravenpress.com/BarryAwards2009.htm.

Last week, I wrote about how to use a blind survey to address underlying unhappiness with your book group’s discussion habits. This week, let’s turn to the next biggest source of the book group blues: discontent with books selected by the group or the process for that selection.

Unhappiness with book selection can take many forms. Some readers complain loudly if the group is not reading what they want. Others are more passive, skipping meetings when they don’t like the book or making subtle complaints during discussion. Some simply suffer in silence.

You can’t make everyone happy with book selections, and one of the great values of book groups is to introduce readers to great books they would not try on their own or to expand their skills and horizons with challenging reading. Still, your readers should feel like the overall direction of book selection is in their best interest and that they have some input to the selection process. If they don’t feel these things, they won’t keep coming for long. Is your selection process getting the results your readers want? Here are a few more blind survey questions you can use to seek out and resolve discontent:

• On a scale from 1 (very unhappy) to 7 (very happy), how do you feel about the quality of our group’s book selections?
• On a scale from 1 (very unhappy with my lack of input) to 7 (very satisfied with my input), how do you feel about your chances to give input to selection of titles?
• Do you have any suggestions for change in our selection process?
• On a scale from 1 (books are often difficult to obtain) to 7 (books have been easy to find), has it been easy to obtain the books we have selected for discussion?
• On a scale from 1 (I would like to be challenged much more) to 7 (I would like much easier books), how do you feel about the difficulty of the books we select?
• Is the selection of books for our group well balanced? If not, how should that balance change? List genres, themes, styles, or moods from which more books should be selected.
• List up to 5 books that the group has selected which you created the best discussion or were the most memorable. What qualities of the books led to these good results?
• List up to 5 books that the group has selected which did not lead to good discussion. What qualities of the books created the problems?

Compile the results and announce them to the group. In particular, watch for negative opinions shared by the majority of members. If the results reveal problems that many of your readers share, you can address them. Conversely, the results may also help a small minority of unhappy readers to realize that others do not perceive the same problems with the group.

Few book groups are happy all the time, and every group will pick an occasional clunker, but a little proactive thinking will go a long way to keeping your readers on course.

One of the sessions held last month at BookExpo America was a panel called Book Club Brainstorming.  Although they were talking to booksellers,  the panelists presented lots of ideas that would work in libraries, too.  The June 16 Shelf Awareness newsletter includes a summary of  Book Club Brainstorming, and you can find a podcast on the BookExpo Podcast site.

This will be my last blog on Book Group Buzz. After 126 blogs and a year and a half discussing book clubs, I want to thank everyone who responded or questioned or commented on my various reading group dilemmas and book-searches. I loved sharing my discoveries with you. My search for great new books will continue, and I’ll still be writing reviews for Shelf-Awareness.com, so I’ll try to make sure my major finds appear there.

As a last contribution, I had to share this exciting new postcard we’ll be giving out at this month’s Pride festivities for our Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club. Photo and design by Monderen Photography — in other words, my dear friend, Jacob. That’s my little feller, Buddy, posing for us.

I wish all of you in book groups many more stimulating discussions and provocative titles to explore.

In preparing for a booktalk that a colleague and I will be giving next week at a local women’s group, I reread Jane Gardam’s Old Filth.

Jane Gardam is an author who is still very much under the radar in the United States, even though a 2006 review in The New York Times mused that Old Filth might just garner Gardam the attention she deserves. The same review praised Old Filth for its “typical excellence and compulsive readability,” called it “pitch-perfect” and hailed Gardam’s talent at creating a hero that “eludes sociological or psychological pigeonholing.” With such words of praise, why do I feel as though I am the only person talking about this book and this author?

First off, there’s the title—you’re probably wondering what it means. Well, Old Filth is merely an acronym for a phrase that the main character coined as a young, struggling lawyer that later become his moniker. It stands for “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong.” Sir Edward Feathers was a renowned lawyer and judge in Hong Kong before he and his wife, Betty, returned to Dorset, England to retire. Edward Feathers is a proper, faithful, emotionally distant man whose life in upended when Betty suddenly dies. Edward’s past starts looming up within him in interesting ways, and the way that Gardam writes this character and draws us in to his interior world is fascinating and unforgettable.

Edward and his wife Betty were both what’s called “Empire Orphans.” Their parents were colonials who sent their children back to England to be educated, in many cases never setting eyes on them again. Edward’s mother died after he was born, and his father scarcely acknowledged him his entire life, but he was sent from his home with the servants in Malay to a foster home with his cousins. We learn that Edward’s childhood was a difficult one, marked by one abandonment after another and a dark secret that Gardam reveals only towards the end.

What I love about Jane Gardam is that she reminds me of Iris Murdoch. Gardam is funny, cutting, a keen observer, and so well-attuned to her characters. Another novelist, Maggie Gee, said it better than I can: “The writing crackles with energy, variety, sensuous richness. It is the writing of a 25-year-old with the wisdom and subtlety of a razor-sharp 100-year-old.”

I don’t mean to beg or anything, but I guess when I see the numbers for the readership of this blog, I harbor idealistic visions of book groups across the country tipping the scales for authors like Gardam. Can you trust me, and schedule this book for your book group at some point in the future? You may not love it as I do, but I guarantee a great discussion out of it. And if you like Old Filth, you might also find that Flight of the Maidens and Faith Fox are also wonderful for discussion.

Neil’s recent suggestion about combining books group discussions with trips to the movie theater is ripe with possibilities in the next few months.   Coming soon to a theater near you:  

My Sister’s Keeper, based on the book by Jodi Picoult, is scheduled to open on June 26. It stars Alec Baldwin,  Abigail Breslin, Cameron Diaz, and Jason Patrick. 

Opening August 7 is Julie & Julia, in which Meryl Streep channels Julia Child,   based on Child’s My Life in France as well as Julie & Julia by Julie Powell.  Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci also star.

Martin Scorsese directs Shutter Island, based on the book by Dennis Lehane and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It opens in October.

Coming in December is The Lovely Bones based on the Alice Sebold novel.  This one is directed by Peter Jackson and stars Saoirse Ronan (remember her in Atonement?), Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci (again).

The last book of this cycle for our mystery and crime fiction series is my perennial favorite read, Minette Walters. Our group has been reading Walters for years, one book a round, and we have made our way up to book ten, Disordered Minds. First published in the U.K. by Macmillan in 2003, when it reached our shores it was published as a Berkley paperback in 2004.

It is the story of a murder that took place in 1970 when a mentally challenged man named Howard Stamp supposedly stabbed his grandmother to death. When he commits suicide three years later, he successfully closes the book on any question about his guilt. For everyone, that is, except George Gardener, a councilor from Bournemouth in Dorset who believes there were some mitigating circumstances in Stamp’s case. This issue is brought to the present day when London anthropologist Jonathan Hughes includes the Stamp case in his books, Disordered Minds, and draws the attention of George.

What makes this book such an interesting one to discuss is that the troubles of George and Jonathan, and their individual challenges, are perhaps more fascinating to the readers than actually determining who did it. This is Walter’s secret: she creates characters who challenge. Whether it is their sexuality, their race, their psychological makeup or their destiny, they write their own questions if your group is willing to read one of the greatest crime writers of our time.

Does your book group work for everyone who attends? It’s better to maintain with continuous minor adaptations and subtle adjustments  than to wait until readers begin to quit and a major overhaul is needed. In particular, you want to avoid the situation where discussion problems turn into public arguments between readers. Think tweezers, not machetes.

Identifying and repairing problems can be a challenge. You might not be aware of festering unhappiness. Something that bothers most of your readers may not upset you. A practice that peeves you may be a highlight for others. 

The goal is to identify mass discontent without getting personal. To that end, a blind survey may be just the ticket. Ask questions about the group, then compile and distribute the results. Look for areas where a broad majority desires change, and then collectively discuss what those changes might be.

Here’s a sample survey of six questions that get at the issues of discussion. I use scales because it’s important not to mistake a minor annoyance for a major problem.

• On a scale from 1 (stick to the book or the theme at hand) to 7 (any topic that interests us should be fair game), how much would you prefer that we focus discussion?
• On a scale from 1 (I prefer deep analysis of one book) to 7 (I prefer to hear a little about a broad range of books), what are your goals for our book group?
• On a scale from 1 (focus on questions) to 7 (use discussion questions only when conversation lags), how would you like to use discussion questions in the group?
• On a scale from 1 (a few individuals are dominating inappropriately) to 7 (discussion is well distributed), how would you describe the flow of discussion in our group?
• On a scale from 1 (we need more serious discussion and debate) to 7 (we need to lighten up), how do you feel about the depth of discussion in our group?
• On a scale from 1 (I am frequently interrupted or can’t get a comment in) to 7 (I say as much as I would like), how do you feel about your ability to speak?

If your survey identifies strong collective requests for change, try starting the discussion this way: “The majority of our members feel we need to change our group in this way (describe the survey result). How can we achieve that result?”

The two most common areas of discord in book groups are disagreements over the conduct of discussion and disagreements over the selection of books. This survey addresses the first area. Next week I’ll provide questions to identify unhappiness with book selection.