Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

I’m at ALA and we’re talking about memorable book group books. My favorite book group story is an old one, about ten years old now. The first nonfiction book I used in a book group was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
For three weeks I heard from over 15 readers opinions ranging from, [...]

Say this is your first reading group. You’ve got five committed friends, but don’t know what to read. The health of a reading group lies in its choices. Not all good books spark a good discussion.
How do you decide what to read together? In many clubs, members take turns choosing the titles. If it’s a [...]

We are in what has been called by some a golden age in the publishing of books for teens.  It turns out many of these books are simply great reads and coming of age stories for adults and teens alike  When a book club has a month when many readers are too busy for a long read, I [...]

Booklist’s Editors’ Choice 2007 fiction list offers a bounty of choices for your book group discussions. Several are titles everyone else is buzzing about, and others are less well-known gems.  To help start your discussion of  some of the Editors’ Choice selections, here are links to reading guides,  author interviews, and other resources.
The Big Girls by Susanna Moore. Author interview.
 Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo. [...]

Recently, I have started to notice and appreciate a new kind of narrator, one I will call “the royal we.” By this I mean novels narrated by a group. Nancy Pearl made note of this in More Book Lust in her section on “Voice.” A couple of notable examples of this are Jeffrey Eugenides’ The [...]

I wanted to share this article that I read in the Nov/Dec. 2007 Mothering magazine about a mother-daughter book group. What I found fascinating about the article is how long this group was together and the ways in which they kept their discussions exciting and fresh over the years. They made recipes, created [...]

We talk quite a bit on this blog about books and tips for existing book groups. Today I’m going to offer something for the potential book group facilitator.
Take a survey of your potential readership. Fold them up and put them in the books on your holds shelf. Particularly the books that would make good titles [...]

Book store sites can be good sources for book group ideas. They can point you to discussable titles, and also hook you up with reviews, author biographies, discussion guides, and other material.
Barnes and Noble’s book club is a collection of moderated discussion boards where, in addition to featured titles, you can find book clubs for  mystery, epics, literature by women, and [...]

Some books demand to be discussed. I’ve just finished one.
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier has just been translated and published in this country, though it’s been a sensation in Europe for several years. It’s a complex, entertaining novel for thinking adults, written not by a novelist but by a Swiss philosophy professor, [...]

So I’m a couple days late with the resolution thing. I’m resolving to be more timely in the new year. Do not hold your breath.
But enough about my charming personal failings. How about a little  guideline or two to improve conversation at a discussion group? I’ll only offer four. That’s a number most of us [...]

As a Fiction Librarian, I often get a little annoyed when patrons distinguish the difference between fiction and non-fiction as “fake” versus “real.”  It’s moments like those when I want to correct such glosses in judgment.  But that’s too big a debate to get into and I probably wouldn’t do it any justice.  Besides, I’d [...]

Feel free to steal any of our ideas. Over at Kansas City Public Library, we’re starting the New Year by celebrating Jane-uary. Those good folks at PBS, whom MEQ mentions below, provided the germ of an idea and our local JASNA chapter sent me polite notes on monogrammed stationary and paid enough calls until I cried, “Pemberly!” and scheduled plenty [...]

I can’t help but take a page from Nancy Pearl’s fabulous “Book Lust” series and recommend some out of the way authors for book groups to try.
One of my favorite 20th century American authors is William Maxwell (1908-2000). Maxwell was the fiction editor for The New Yorker for 40 years. He won the [...]

 Just a month ago a quiet, shy young woman employee I encounter every Thursday morning at the University Book Store in Seattle was suddenly animated and talkative, with a lot to say. In fact, Jodie Vinson had been waiting to ambush me. The reason: she knew I had read Remembrance of Things Past twice, that [...]