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If you don’t think you’ll be able to finish that book in time for your next book group meeting, the Chicago Tribune recently asked several authors about how to fake it. Read a little bit, one author advised–read two reviews, and then two pages in the middle of the book and two pages at the end. Another suggests [...]

On your next trip to Sam’s Club to stock up on paper towels and bottled water, you can add a copy of  Beth Hoffman’s Saving CeeCee Honeycutt to your cart. It’s the first selection in the new Sam’s Club national book club, which means it will be prominently displayed at store locations. The book club will kick [...]

Let’s face it — most book club members are women.  And from what I’ve observed, most book club leaders are also women.  Sometimes I wonder if that’s why so many of the books being talked about these days (at least in literary fiction groups) are written by women.  Is this apparent preference a feminist stance?  [...]

I wrote earlier this week about a personal connection to this year’s obituary list, but recent postings on FictionL and this superb obituary collection on The Reader’s Advisor Online are a reminder that it’s time to take that annual moment and reflect on all the writers lost in the last year. Book groups are in a [...]

I have a personal connection with the youngest of the writers I’ve seen on 2009′s roll of obituaries, which I’ll share as I consider that list (more ideas about how book groups should use such lists later this week, but this first.) I was fortunate enough to attend and occasionally read on some of the same [...]

Those who enjoyed the Masterpiece Classic adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which was shown on PBS in 2008, have a treat in store. Further adventures of Miss Matty Jenkyns (played by Dame Judi Dench) and her fellow villagers will be shown in Return to Cranford on January 10 and 17. Cranford,  first  published as a [...]

I am now of the appropriate age that I can say that if the world would only stop doing things a new way and would do it the way I liked it, civilization will be saved.  I am reminded of this as my daily newspaper slowly shrinks into nothingness.  However, today’s newspaper announced the death of [...]

All of us who contribute to this blog have heard war stories about book groups with problem members, bad reading selections, and loosey-goosey discussions. When we get together to commiserate we sometimes compare our experiences to those of therapists. Or bartenders. Since the RUSA CODES Readers’ Advisory Committee didn’t have a liquor license, they dubbed [...]

Every once in a while, a book comes along that I simply MUST talk to someone about.  You know what I’m talking about – maybe it’s halfway through and you’re trying to figure out a puzzling event, or maybe your first thought after the last page is, “I have to find someone to talk to [...]