Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

The Adult Reading Round Table (ARRT), the Chicago-area readers advisory continuing education group I’ve mentioned before on this blog, has for a number of years periodically hosted a special event called “The Book Discussion Round-up.”  This program is divided into two parts, the first being a book discussion that lasts for about an hour, the [...]

In honor of my recent visit to Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, a veritable mecca for booklovers, I thought I would share some of their unique resources for book groups.
Powell’s has staked its reputation over the years as a robust independent bookseller with knowledgeable staff and one of the biggest general collections of new and [...]

 
 
PHILIPPE CLAUDEL
BY A SLOW RIVER
The first question I asked my book group was:  which has a greater affect on the characters in this book:  murder or war?
Considering it is December, 1917, and the rumblings of war can be heard everyday in the small unnamed French village that is the setting for this novel, the answer [...]

This weekend the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art hosted its second book group for members. I mentioned this project a couple of months ago and wanted to let everyone know how it turned out.
On Friday night, registered readers gathered at the Visitor’s desk and were brought to one of the museum’s special events rooms. Guests mingled [...]

Who was Britain wild about before Harry came along? You might be surprised to find that before J.K. Rowling took over as that country’s best-selling author, the title was held for most of the 1990s by another fantasy writer: Terry Pratchett.
My science fiction and fantasy group enjoyed a delightful meeting this month after reading any title by [...]

Fifty pages from the end, and he’s still got me guessing. The narrator is up to something, but I don’t know what. What I do know is that this is my favorite new kind of novel – a rascal narrator playing with my mind as he tells me his story. They’re perfect for book groups. [...]

While I don’t get the opportunity often, every once in a while I get to be a book group sub.  This week I got to discuss Lisa See’s Peony in Love with the Nikkei Book Group.  This group of Japanese American ladies has been meeting for years now, focusing on Asian-themed literature.
While I did write [...]

Book Group Buzz readers, does your discussion group rate the books it talks about?  I bring this up because a fellow discussion leader recently told me about asking her group members to rate Cormac McCarthy’s The Road on a scale of 1-5 before they launched into the discussion, and she was surprised by how many of them [...]

Simple games are a great way to get your group meeting off to a strong start. They break the ice, get everyone thinking about the book in new ways, and encourage everyone to get involved. If you make them part of your regular practice, they’re also a pleasant way to encourage recalcitrant readers to finish [...]

Just saw a blog post over at Publisher’s Weekly Shelftalker that made me hoot.
Members of a book group read different books and then swap the most promising titles amongst themselves after discussing. Books that fall into the “five-hours-of-my-life-I’ll-never-get-back” catetory are dismissed from the group in a ceremony reminiscent of first grade.
The offending/boring/pedantic tome is marched [...]

  Laughter. Reading groups need it. Like in that last novel about Bosnia.
How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic is a brand new novel about the young author’s childhood in Bosnia circa 1991, just as life turned into a nightmare and neighbor turned against neighbor. It includes some harrowing stuff. But it’s all [...]

 
For the spring conference of the Wisconsin Association of Public Librarians, I led a book discussion on Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.  There is nothing easier than doing a book discussion for librarians who lead book discussions.  When I train, I always talk about the perfect book discussion or what I refer to as [...]

Last week I highlighted book group support web sites where discussion leaders can find reading guides and discussion questions for their book club selections. Another excellent source for these are the publishers themselves. Most major publishers of literary fiction have figured out that distributing reading guides is a good way for them to increase word-of-mouth and [...]

There is no doubt that I write a lot about Seattle and The Seattle Public Library, where I work.  Chances are, I will go on writing about both of these topics again and again, so please forgive me.  Today I wanted to draw your attention, dear reader, to a relatively new blog called Shelf Talk.
 Shelf [...]

The Adult Reading Round Table (ARRT) is a group of librarians and library workers in the Chicagoland area who meet regularly to develop their readers advisory skills.  One of the group’s ongoing activities is genre study, and for the past two and a half years, members have been focusing on nonfiction leisure reading interests.  Every other [...]

Our book club has been asked to move.
It isn’t the first time the book club at University Book Store in Seattle has moved. Since the club’s inception in 2003, we’ve gone from a circle of folding chairs to a conference room, and from several different restaurants in the University District to half a year of [...]

This week I have immersed myself in Seattle Reads The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu.  Incidentally, Mengestu’s book recently won the LA Times First Fiction Award.
My week started with the Book-It Reperatory Theater’s staged reading of excerpts from the book.  The actors brought such life to the characters and to the words on the [...]

The list of Man Booker Prize winners and shortlist titles can be a wonderful source for book group ideas. For its 40th anniversary, the Man Booker Prize had a contest this spring  to determine the best Booker-winning title. The official contest is closed, but the online bookseller ABEBooks is conducting its own customer poll.  
An ABEBooks panel will announce a [...]

With the help of Book Group Buzz (or possibly, sniff!, some other minor resource) you’ve selected the next choice for your book group. Where can you go to get more information?
Many publishers make it easy these days, with discussion questions and author interviews included in the back of the book. When that fails, we all [...]

Here’s a book that begs to be read in August when minds are melting from the heat and readers want something engaging but not too taxing. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
Co-authors Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, aunt and niece respectively, have constructed a charming post-World War II epistolary novel that will [...]