Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

  Some thirty pages into Bi Feiyu’s lovely little novel, The Moon Opera, I happened to get up for a drink and noticed, passing a mirror, that I had a huge smile on my face. I mean, literally, a grin. The kind of idiotic, toothy gaping look I would never want anyone to see on [...]

For anyone interested in what was discussed at the “Let’s Talk About Books” meeting, here is the list: Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher Martin Millar: Lonely Werewolf Girl; Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me; The good fairies of New York Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere; Anansi Boys What Happened to [...]

Today, since my colleague Linda was on vacation, I facilitated the book discussion for the open-ended discussion group, “Let’s Talk About Books!” The Fiction department calls in “LTAB,” simply because we, like other groups in general and libraries in particular, just love acronyms. Anyway, LTAB is an informal group that meets twice a month where [...]

A sports book, you say, and one about an event held almost 50 years ago at that… that’s not the book for our group. But before you turn away from David Maraniss’s Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World, hear me out. The joy of reading sports books, as my friend Kaite Mediatore Stover would say, [...]

  Some months the book is just special. This was one of them. I’ve never read a novel like Arto Paasilinna’s The Howling Miller – and for that alone, simply as a stand-alone, utterly unusual reading experience, the novel won my heart. The superb character of the miller, depicted almost entirely through action and words, [...]

Of all the book group topics I blog about, I’m rarely asked about how to select the right book, how to compose discussion questions or how to keep conversation going. I’m always asked how to handle “challenging” members of a book group. I must admit, I haven’t had as many “special” participants as some of [...]

Last week, I experienced something new — an intergenerational book discussion.  I wasn’t the leader — that job went to a friend of mine, a fellow librarian, who organized the activity at the request of a local elementary school principal.  My friend asked me to participate in the group, along with five other adults, mostly [...]

I really need to stop letting myself get so stressed out choosing the book of the month. It wears me down and makes me old. I take it so seriously. When I recommend a book, it means something. I want to be behind the book one hundred percent if I promote it and ask others [...]

                It’s literary award season, and here’s one you might not have heard of: the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award.  Not bad books, just bad sex in sometimes very good books. Established by Auberon Waugh and presented by the Literary Review since 1993, the award is intented to ”gently” persuade authors and publishers not to include “unconvincing, perfunctory, [...]

I have to confess… the end of the world is a source of great pleasure to me. Just when I think I’ve read about every possible way that humanity can slide into the abyss, another author comes up with an inventive take on armageddon or its aftermath. Many readers only recently discovered post-apocalyptic literature, when [...]

When my book group discussed Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 2004, we had no way of knowing that the author would become the 44th President of the United States. It made me wonder how book groups picking up the book now will read it, how Obama [...]

Forget the 10k and the bronze statue. What these authors really want is for people to read their books. Well, last night, they all got their wish. The National Book Awards were bestowed at a ceremony hosted by playwright Eric Bogosian. The nonfiction winner, Annette Gordon-Reed, received a pretty nice birthday present when she became [...]

  Well, I was at my wits’ end, trying to find a short, upbeat book for December to read in my book group and feature in my bookstore, and I figured anything goes, maybe I’ll just do something completely different and go back one hundred years to a comic classic I’ve never read, always meant [...]

Dang it, I don’t think either one of these is going to work. I’ve been reading two new non-fiction books this weekend, hoping I’d find our group’s book for December, and neither one quite fills the bill.   I had high hopes for Daniel L. Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, as my last two [...]

A recent blog post from Seattle’s own University Bookstore got me reflecting on the books I am truly thankful for in recent memory. For one, I am thankful to Mary at the main store for handing me Dorothy Whipple’s Someone at a Distance. The Persephone Books edition is so lovely to hold, that I keep [...]

“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul/When hot for certainties in this our life!”–George Meredith My father-in-law introduced me to Rosamond Lehmann. He sent me a copy of “The Heart of Me,” a film starring Paul Bettany, Olivia Williams and Helena Bonham Carter, a film based on Lehmann’s novel The Echoing Grove. Rosamond Lehmann [...]

The good doctors at New York Presbyterian Hospital have realized the healing power of talking about books. In an effort to improve the bedside manners of residents, Dr. Richard S. Panush encourages the discussion of short stories, poetry and essays among his fellow physicians and their patients. Using literature as a jumping off point for [...]

Last week, I wrote about ideas for book groups during the holiday season. No matter how you spend that meeting, it’s important, it’s mindful, it’s wise as another year of reading comes to an end, to celebrate and acknowledge your efforts. I’ve been thinking about why people choose to give their time to the rather [...]

I want to discuss the book’s merits as literature. I want to discuss character motivation, and foreshadowing, and plot surprises. I want to discuss an author’s skill in tying together his threads at the end. As for the actual content of the book – its historical setting, its social setting, the issues at stake – [...]

Goodbye, Wisconsin by Glenway Wescott.  Borderland Books Edition, 2008.  For many years, in the back of my mind, there lurked a book with a title that intrigued me and angered me at the same time: Glenway Wescott’s Goodbye, Wisconsin.  What is wrong with us and why is everyone always trying to leave, I wondered but [...]