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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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I keep hearing from teens and occasionally older readers, about their dislike of reading as a leisure activity. When I probe for reasons why, I’m told that it was English class and the assigned reading that turned some folks off. This makes me wonder if book groups aren’t guilty of the same “overreading” of books [...]

Contrary to my initial fears, Alan Bennett’s delightful novella, The Uncommon Reader, provided plenty for my book group to talk about. The Uncommon Reader is an homage to reading which starts out with the Queen of England stumbling upon a bookmobile on the Palace grounds while walking her Corgis. The Queen decides to check out [...]

A half hour into our first discussion this month at the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club, I could see I was in trouble. I like this book too much. So does everyone else. Those are not the ingredients for a healthy discussion. The good ones are always the hardest. I’ve just finished enjoying my [...]