Barbara Mead, president of Reading Group Choices, got in touch with us this week  to tell us how much she likes Book Group Buzz.  If you don’t know Reading Group Choices it’s an organization that develops “resources that enhance the reading group experience.” Their Web site  is a great source for recommendations of  discussable books and discussion topics.  For featured titles, you can find bibliographic data, a summary, an author bio, and helpful “conversation starters.” There are author interviews as well. 

Reading Group Choices has been at it since 1994, so there are lots of books on the site, which can be seached by author, title, publisher, genre, and more.  In addition to the Web site, they publish a print guide, now in its 14th edition, and will provide one complimentary copy to libraries. You can order a copy of the guide by going to the Web site and registering using the code RGC in the code box. Additional copies can be ordered for a special library price.

If tasks like maintaining membership lists and sending meeting reminders are threatening to derail your group, try GenerousBooks, a community that provides free services for book clubs.

There’s no denying the influence Oprah’s Book Club has had on books and reading.  Those book groups that make a point of avoiding Oprah selections can now avoid her latest,  just-announced pick: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, by Eckhart Tolle.  In a new Book Club twist, Oprah and Eckhart will be teaching a 10-week interactive webinar, complete with workbooks. If your  group wants to stick to old-fashioned  discussions, the Oprah’s Book Club site has an archive of discussion questions and other resources for books she’s picked in the past.

Thoughts come to a guy sitting alone in a restaurant, knowing no one is going to join him for his book club discussion.

Why did I have to choose such a thick, difficult book? Why couldn’t I choose something shorter and more fun? Night Train to Lisbon is rich and toothsome and full of thoughts, no doubt, but not everyone is willing to wade through italicized chunks of philosophy, dozens of characters, and two alternating plots to get their reading high. I was sitting alone at the big round banquette in the back of the Ravenna Varsity Restaurant. The round table is designed for eight. I had laid out my list of characters. I had spread out my chapter plot summaries. I just didn’t have any club members.

I was trying to blame it on the snow warning that night and searching the menu for comfort food when in walked the one member that I knew hated the book. Joline had tried to read it, called me for encouragement, given it two more fair shots, and thrown it down the weekend before our meeting after slugging through 150 pages. Night Train to Lisbon just wasn’t giving her what she wanted out of a book. But she’d come to the meeting anyway, hoping to hear what the others thought.

Then in walked Lillian, the one member who I knew had loved the novel as wildly and passionately as I did. I wasn’t expecting Lillian because she would have to bus to our meeting from West Seattle. That’s a two-bus trip on a night when all the weather stations predicted snow. She came anyway. She didn’t want to miss the discussion.

To our delight, one more member came striding toward us. Lowen, our Ballard author friend, always joins us when he’s in town. Lowen’s copy was all marked up with pen. He had quibbles with numerous passages due to the translation. He had wrestled his way through the novel, but he liked it with reservations.

The teenage nightshift manager took our orders. Then without even trying the four of us fell into a classic book conversation. What we lacked in membership, we made up in a perfect balance of reactions and ideas. To my surprise, though the novel has two heroes, we were uniformly obsessed with discussing only one of them.

It was almost eight o’clock by the time I said good night to Lillian at the bus stop, both of us utterly satisfied with our meeting. There was no snow in sight. Maybe choosing a genuinely good book was the way to go, after all.

Food is a contentious issue in book groups. There are books and chapters of books devoted to enhancing book discussion through food. Dinner parties have, like book groups, become the in thing. But food can really distract from discussion. (Please correct me if I am wrong—I would love to hear stories from groups who have successfully combined books and food!)

Seeing as I have facilitated book groups at a public library for the last several years, food hasn’t come up all that often. When I have tried food, I found that it attracted our homeless population rather than avid readers (don’t get me wrong, I would welcome a homeless reader anyday), so I stopped. But I just read a book that made me wish my group met around some shared meals.

Nicole Mones’ The Last Chinese Chef is a foodie’s delight. For one, it debunks the largely held notion that American Chinese food is what you’ll find in China. China’s history and relationship with food is infinitely more varied and complex than garlic tofu and moo shu pork. While telling a story, Mones manages to educate the reader step by step about Chinese cuisine and history and how irrevocably intertwined they are.

Mones also tells the story of an American food writer, Maggie McElroy, who was recently widowed when her husband was struck down by a car. A year after her husband’s death, Maggie is pulled to China when a surprising paternity suit arises. She also travels to China to interview Sam Liang, an American born man of Chinese-Jewish-American heritage who is the grandson of a famous Chinese chef. Sam intends to bring back traditional cuisine and also signs up to compete in the Chinese national cooking team for the 2008 Olympics. Not surprisingly, a relationship between Maggie and Sam develops out of their mutual appreciation for food. This is a love story, but a love story of a different sort—it is as much about the characters as it is about China’s long-lasting love affair with food.

Now it’s your chance to dish! Tell me about other great foodie book group books!

So you’ve probably been wondering how my 70+ book group turned out? No? Well, let me tell you anyway. Please? Okay, so here’s what happened. First, I shouldn’t have been all up in arms over 70+ rsvps. Because only 35 people showed up. Which is still about 20 too many for a good book discussion according to Teddy B.

I had five round tables with seven people at each table. About two days before the program, I called our guest facilitator, Zarrin, and told her I needed a short presentation on her topic, about 15 to 20 minutes, and then she and I would bounce from table to table getting conversation started. Zarrin thought that was a good idea and reworked her remarks. I made up five packets of information on Jane Austen’s life, the novels, a few discussion topics, some illustrations and historical background.

As the attendees arrived, I would chat with most of them and then cajoled wheedled abjectly begged invited my friends or most gregarious book group members to be table facilitators. I gave each one a folder with the information and told them to go with the flow, as long as conversation revolved around Jane Austen, no one would get too picky.

I announced to the crowd that they should feel free to move from table to table to take part in other conversations after Zarrin had provided some tidbits for us all to gnaw on.

This method worked beautifully. Zarrin and I moved from table to table and after a while, it was just me. Zarrin was the Austenite of the moment and was constantly getting flagged down to elaborate on her thematic overlay theories in Austen’s novels.

Conversation was fascinating. One table discussed the merits of literary continuations and retellings in the Austen vein; another table compared all versions of the Pride & Prejudice movies to the book; another table took up Zarrin’s topic and looked at the characters of all the cads and tried to determine which was the most despicable.

It went much better than I anticipated and I have given thought to doing another book group like this as a special event. It required very little preparation time and set up. We had copies of Pride & Prejudice to give away as table prizes. (donated by the FOL. I didn’t have any $$ to buy.)

I am currently reading the teen science fiction book Epic by Conor Kostick and it is filled with Scandinavian names. The characters have names like Injeborg, Svein, and Hleid. I am uncertain how to say these names which would not stop me from using the book for a book discussion but does present a hurdle.

I wondered how other book club leaders handle names they cannot pronounce confidently at book discussions. I love finding the book on tape to help me out or a native speaker if the issue is one of foreign language familiarity (though in some fantasies perhaps only the author really knows the pronunciation). I also worry about book discussion participants feeling comfortable when they are uncertain of pronunciation. For that reason, sometimes I have played a snippet of a dramatic scene from the audiobook at the beginning of a book discussion.

Anyone else run into this concern?

Keir’s not going to believe me when I say I’m lousy at cocktail parties. But I mean it. I suk at them. I don’t ever walk into a gathering of any kind without some kind of game or trick to share in order to avoid embarassing lapses in conversation.

At the Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia my entree’ was a poll guarannteed to bolster witty repartee among librarians already plied with wine and crudites. I merely asked, “What is the worst book you’ve ever encountered in book group?”

Answers flew thick and fast and the list is rather incredible. Some reasons for a book’s failure were provided, most reading group facilitators/members simply rolled their eyes and said they’d discussed that particular biblio-dud enough, thankyouverymuch.

Here’s the list of books that “tanked” in some book groups. You may be surprised. Perhaps your group has discussed one of these titles and had a great chat. Perhaps your flop isn’t listed (feel free to add it). And maybe you’ll find your next great book group read, equipping you with plenty of material for cocktail parties or book discussions.

Possession by A.S. Byatt–”It’s never a good idea to choose your own personal favorite.”

Middlemarch by George Eliot–”Oh, this book was looooonnnnnggggggg.”

Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama–(shrug) “Don’t know what they didn’t like about it.”

Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen–”Whine, whine, whyohwhy, did you pick THIS book?!?!”

On Beauty by Zadie Smith–”Snore.”

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury–”Not every book is suitable for every group.”

Bird’s-Eye View by J.F. Freedman–”Only a shot of Maker’s Mark could make this book palatable.”

Every group has its comfort zone. The delight of a group after reading a book they truly enjoy is addicting. There’s a temptation to keep choosing those same kinds of books that become easy favorites, the kind you know your book group will thoroughly enjoy. And, of course, that’s basically a good idea.

In both reading groups I hosted to read Khaled Hosseini’s Thousand Splendid Suns, every reader had a lot to say. It was never in question whether we’d read it or not. It was the best attended meeting of the year. Like The Kite Runner, the book made publishing history. Hosseini’s profound good nature combined with his storytelling determination create such a human experience, it’s impossible not to be moved. That was an easy choice. Choosing an adventuresome book outside of the reading group’s comfort zone means submitting the other group members to a potentially unsatisfying reading experience.

On the other hand, giving your fellow readers an opportunity to experience a toothsome literary experience, a book that takes a little work, can be a true blessing. Some books are like a bag of unshelled nuts. You need to do the cracking and the shelling. But when you do, sometimes what’s inside is truly worth it.

Take Night Train to Lisbon, which my club will be discussing this Monday. I had some reservations. It’s thick. It’s got two plots, includes big chunks of philosophy, and involves enough characters to fill two football teams. Yet it’s still vivid in my mind months after reading it, and certain scenes – like the brilliant young student’s outrageous graduation speech, or the revelation of the mystery as to why Adriana always wears a black ribbon around her throat – will haunt me forever.

But I may find myself at a very, very small book club meeting.

 Two more Web sites that are good book group resources:

 ”Dedicated to sharing great books, news and tips with book club girls everywhere” is how the year-old Book Club Girl describes its mission.  Jennifer Hart (who works at HarperCollins) blogs about discussable books and other book-group matters, and also  provides links to reading guides, book club resources, and author sites.

At Overbooked.org, Ann Chambers Theis, Collection Management Administrator of Chesterfield County Library, provides “timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction” in the form of lists of titles that received starred reviews from major review sources, hot new titles (based on reviews), themed book lists, and lots more. Overbooked has been online since 1994, and at the 2008 ALA Midwinter Meeting, Ann was awarded the Louis Shores-Greenwood Publishing Group Award, which recognizes “significant achievement related to a reviewing process.”

In my library there is a shelf of books reserved for members of book clubs to check out.  In years past, it has been all adult titles.  Now, nearly half of the books on the shelf are children’s and YA books for parent and PTA led children’s book clubs.

I thought I’d tell you what is on the shelf this evening which shows just how young book club members are getting.  Books clubs for children using this Chicago surburban library are discussing:

Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night by Cynthia Rylant - an easy reader about the adventures of a boy and his dog

Four Mice Deep in the Jungle by Geronimo Stilton - a beginning chapter book about the adventures of a fraidy mouse in a dangerous jungle

Judy Moody Around the World in 8 1/2 Days by Megan McDonald - a beginning chapter book about a school project and a new friendship

The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin - 3rd/4th grade chapter book about a Taiwanese American girl’s attempts to fit in at school

Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech - 5th/6th grade chapter about a girl with a wise grandmother who helps her figure out her friendship with the boy next door

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - 5th - 7th grade chapter book.  A classic survival story of a boy who survives a plane crash to spend 54 days surviving in the wild.

A Corner of the Universe by Ann Martin - 6th -8th grade chapter book.  Stories of Hattie’s twelfth summer in a small town.

Bittersweet 16 by Carrie Karasyov - teen novel about wealthy prep school girls

According to Ted Balcom, the ideal book group has 8 to 15 participants. As part of my Library’s “Jane-uary” celebration of Jane Austen’s life and works we are, of course, conducting a book discussion.

The plan was to have all interested participants read any Austen novel of their choice. A local Austen expert would then lead the readers in spirited discussion of any portion of a novel they chose to discuss and supplement conversation with information about Jane’s life, her times and critical analysis of the novels.

We have 72 people signed up for this book group. Kansas City is jazzed for Jane and I am at a loss as to how one conducts a productive discussion among 72 people.

Anyone out there ever hold a book discussion for more than 50 people? All suggestions, ideas and notions will be entertained and cheerfully cribbed.

Richard Russo is becoming one of my favorite authors. He brings to his writing the kind of compassion and understanding for humanity that I have found in George Eliot, which can be a balm in the thick of the overly cynical, clever books that keep getting churned out to no end.

His latest is the perfect book for a reader who enjoys character. It’s all about character development, and little else, honestly.

Lou Charles “Lucy” Lynch has lived his whole life in Thomaston, New York. All of his memories and his identity are tied up in that town. At 60, Lou, a man who lives and breathes in reminiscence, revisits his memories of the father he adored and who adored him, Big Lou, and his mother, a woman who tempers her husband’s boundless optimism with a realist’s edge. And then there’s Bobby Marconi, the wild boy that Lucy looked up to, whose friendship he sought at every turn. And Sarah, the woman Lucy married. These three form a classic love triangle.

What “happens” in the book is much less important than the revelations that these characters make about themselves and each other. While it is a little long in the tooth, I never wavered as a reader. Russo creates characters that you want to know, that you don’t mind spending a little extra time with. This is a writer that I will follow anywhere.

Recently my book group discussed Jim Harrison’s Dalva. I had selected it because Julia Glass had called it one of her favorite books in an interview I read years ago. Her descriptions of the book made it sound compelling. Plus, I had never read Harrison and thought this might be a good place to start.

But when I started the book I realized that it might pose some difficulties. It doesn’t present much in the way of a straight-forward narrative and it digresses wildly. Dalva is a strong woman and Harrison does write in a woman’s voice well, but there is something remote about her. Michael, an oversexed buffoon of a professor who is studying Dalva’s family and their involvement with the plight of Native Americans, is mostly unlikable. It also took me a long time to read it, so I feared for the worst.

What I love about my book group (and book groups in general), is that they will always surprise you. You may have some readers whose reactions are so consistent you can predict what they’ll love or hate ahead of time, but most readers are more complex and even surprise themselves.

Dalva did, as Nick mentioned in a previous post, divide the room. It was unanimously agreed that his descriptions of place and of food were marvelous. But the character of Dalva was much disputed. Some said that Harrison wrote Dalva as a male-fantasy—an intelligent woman who regards sex as a man would. Was Michael also an extension of the author’s sexual fantasies? Were the characters too muddled for the historical context to come out? Or was this a masterpiece of American fiction, as the male friend of one member had claimed? The discussion was fascinating. We reached no easy conclusions. One member said that the discussion gave her a better appreciation of the book. She had even started the sequel to Dalva, The Road Home.

That is what meeting with other readers is all about, enhancing our appreciation for and understanding of what we read.

  I’m still regretting that University Book Store didn’t have a book club meeting in November. Attendance had been low. I lost faith for the first time in five years, and cancelled. Our book that month was Irene Nemirovsky’s Fire in the Blood, and it’s the perfect kind of short, complex, multi-layered book to provide a compelling evening of conversation for a reading group. What a lost opportunity!

This little mini-masterpiece, coming out in paperback in July, would be cause for rejoicing even if Suite Francaise had never been found. Far from being one of those second-rate “lost” manuscripts exploited after an author’s death, Fire in the Blood is a lean, mean little wonder, a treasure just recently pieced together, possibly the last manuscript Nevirovsky was working on in 1942 when she was arrested, imprisoned, and killed at Auschwitz.

Suite Francaise, with its historical setting and grand wartime scope, is Nemirovsky in a Tolstoy-like mood. Not Fire in the Blood. This short novel doesn’t have a hint of wartime horrors. It’s her timeless Chekhov piece, a tight little drama of country landowners and unfaithful wives in which some humdinger surprises go off like blazing pistols in the second half.

The most fascinating and tricky thing about the novel is the narrator. Old Sylvestre, nicknamed Silvio, impoverished uncle, down-on-his-luck failure in life, has decided to lay bare his soul and the souls of quite a few members of the wealthy farming community of a little village in Burgundy. He’s particularly interested in three fascinating women: his lovely, happily-married cousin Helene, her daughter Colette who is about to be married, and Brigitte Declos, a young woman married to a wealthy old skinflint.

The novel begins with Colette introducing her fiancé to her family, announcing that she hopes for a marriage as stable and enduring as her parents’. Well, Silvio knows differently and bares it all in this swift little whiplash of a literary experience, as two beautiful young women with “fire in the blood” reach out for the man they love, unleashing the secrets and lies of everyone around them.

This particular reader gasped at the abrupt audacity of the last sentence. With a new understanding of the plot in retrospect, I went right back to the beginning of this cunning little puzzle of deceptions to read it again. Every word counts, every sentence is immaculate, every twist of the storyline is a delightful pleasure, in this wise, ironic look at passionate love and the collateral damage of “fire in the blood.”

Of course, it all depends on whether you believe the cunning old liar who’s telling the story. Is old Silvio accurately reporting the truth at last, or is this his male ego distorting what happened and rationalizing away the unpleasant parts? It’s an ideal vehicle for using first person in a reading group, because every reader’s opinion will differ – which makes it perfect for a great discussion.

Here are some links I found today.

Read ‘em and Meet: Book Clubs Are Everywhere from The Times-Picayune, January 16, 2008.

Book Club Tips for Author Chats from a blog called Books on the Brain.

The American Library Association has created a Book Discussion Groups wiki page in response to numerous questions from librarians about starting and running a book  group.

For those of you who don’t know about LibraryThing, it’s a site where you create your very own library catalog, with book information from Amazon, the Library of Congress, and other sources.   But more than that, “everyone catalogs together,” which  sounds like a staff development activity for tech services librarians until you understand LibraryThing’s social side. Every book you add to your catalog connects you with other people on LibraryThing, so you can see their lists, ratings, and reviews.  In addition, LibraryThing recommends books based on tags that members have applied. 

Besides using the ratings and recommendations to get ideas for books to discuss,  there are other  ways LibraryThing can be part of your book group experience. For example, your group can create its own account.  Or you can join an existing  LibraryThing group. Currently, there are groups for sci-fi readers, fantasy readers, mystery readers, historical fiction readers, children’s fiction readers–even for all you  lovers of medieval history and feminist theory.

It’s personal. It can’t be helped. Ultimately the monthly selection for any reading group boils down to personal choices. The major factor in choosing will always be the interests of the selector and a particular cluster of readers.

I’ve been the selector for University Book Store’s book club for five years. I’m no exception. My choices are limited by what genuinely interests me: novels and memoirs from around the world. I try to stretch as much as possible, but not beat myself up over my limited focus. I’ve learned to lean toward shorter books, so I can read them twice. I go through maybe a dozen advances a month, trying to find realistic, well-shaped personal narratives, true or not, that give me a rush of satisfaction when I finish them, with characters and incidents and insights that linger in the mind.

Realism

Most of my life I have loved fantasy elements. Since 9/11, fantasy elements no longer interest me. I close a book the minute I discover it’s being told from beyond the grave, involves sexy vampires, or the narrator is a dog. I feel like we’re all surrounded by fantasies, anyway, like terrorism and democracy, and it’s up to us to see through the illusions. The challenge is to see what is really there.

If I’m going to ask other readers to invest time in reading, if I’m going to listen to an exciting conversation that matters, I want no interference from non-realistic elements, no angelic aid, no romantic time-traveler, no magical door into another dimension. For a good book conversation, nothing is better than a smart, honest author bravely writing from the heart about real concerns. Tell us a story we can believe, with real characters facing real dilemmas, which members of a book club can then endorse, criticize, praise or lampoon based on their own real experience.

First Person

A story told from the limited perspective of a single point of view makes for the best discussion. A novel written in first person is just like a member of the club telling a story. You discuss the story, and you discuss the storyteller. Is she honest? Is she fair? Is she lying? Is she hiding something? Is she in denial about something? It opens up a second layer for discussion.

Instead of being told a character’s motives by an omniscient author – so-and-so thinks this, so-and-so feels that, which is the kind of thing in real life you never, ever know for sure – you have only the narrator’s word for what is happening. You have to guess at why people do things, just like the rest of the human race. First person narration includes the ignorance of the storyteller and the storyteller’s misunderstandings. It creates the illusion of a fellow human being talking directly to the reader, with all the limitations and shortcomings that entails. It intensifies the intimacy of the reading act.

Moral Issues

Every day we face choices involving goodness. Moral issues are the spine of a book conversation. Why do we do what we do? What is worth doing? There are so many fascinating answers. What a reading group needs is literature that deals with choices, beliefs, and ethics, the decisions that make up our lives. As we read about issues that matter to us, we lay our own judgments out for changing and growth.

That’s the recipe I think works best, from the five years I’ve been reading group selector. Choose books for discussion that see the world through someone else’s eyes, involving the insights and limitations of human perception. Someone once said, “Misunderstanding is the root of all evil,” and that single, sad truth is at the heart of the best books for discussion. We constantly misjudge people. A good book discussed in an effective reading group opens everyone up. Each individual reader encounters the limited perception of the narrator, and by sharing our understanding of someone else’s vision of life, we enrich our own.

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose is a book lover’s dream! In every chapter Prose breaks down the art of literature by its dazzling components–the sentence, the paragraph, characterization, gesture, dialogue—and creates an understanding and appreciation for the masters of the craft. The authors, stories, and scenes she uses to illustrate her point are inspired and inspiring—I wanted to run right out and read every author, short story, and novel she cited as examples throughout.

This is also a great book for book group leaders and book groups. For leaders who are burning out and feel they need some new strategies to get their group past the “I hated/loved it” morass, Prose’s approach to picking apart what a writer is doing would provide some excellent exercises for a leader to try. The book itself might be a nice discussion in and of itself. For one, it does introduce some new ways to read, but it also introduces some authors and books a group may not have encountered before. I mean, I fancy myself a fairly well read person (although I work with and know many others who totally blow me out of the water), and I didn’t know or hadn’t read half of the authors Prose mentions!

One of the final chapters is dedicated to the reading of Chekhov’s short stories and how he broke every rule and convention Prose felt she kept trying to impart on her writing students. I can’t wait to dedicate a little time to Chekhov myself. And thanks to Prose, I know that I will slow down and savor my reading a little more.

Many groups start by reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, but I think To the Lighthouse is another great one to start with. It focuses on the Ramsey family and their summer guests in the Hebrides. Here are some discussion questions I came up with when I could not find any elsewhere:

1. What distinguishes Woolf from other writers? What is her writing style?
2. Woolf often employs stream-of-consciousness in her writing. Why do you think that she does this through multiple and shifting perspectives in this book? What does this accomplish?
3. Mr. Ramsey is described by Mrs. Ramsey and Lily with violent and domineering imagery. What does this say about him in relation to the two women? What does Woolf want to say about relationships between women and men?
4. Time is a major theme in this novel. How does Woolf and her characters approach the passage of time?
5. How does Mrs. Ramsey affect those around her? How do you view her designs for other people’s lives? What is her role or sphere of influence?
6. What is the nature of the relationship between Mrs. Ramsey and Lily? How does it change? How does each woman view friendship?
7. Maturity and striking out on your own are recurrent themes in the novel. Mr. Ramsay remarks that he wants his children to know that life “requires courage, truth and the power to endure.” What are Mrs. Ramsey’s views on how to approach and live life? What are the author’s views?
8. “If only she could out them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things.” Lily wants to capture the Ramseys and her time with them. Can artists, can art, capture truth? Are truths universal or subjective?
9. What does Lily, does Woolf, think about the role of art in exploring life and human relationships?
10. How is gender and male and female roles explored throughout the novel? What do Mrs. Ramsey, Mr. Ramsey and Lily embody?
11. What does the Lighthouse, and going to the lighthouse, represent?

We need YOU to tell us what you think. Click the link below and please share your thoughts about book groups with the Reference & User Services Association (RUSA) CODES (don’t ask me what those letters stand for) Readers’ Advisory committee. We will be sharing the survey results at a program to be delivered at ALA in Anaheim.

Go on. We want your opinion. Share. You know you want to. 

 Book Group Survey