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At the tail end of March my library cooperated with the Milwaukee Public Library’s Big Read celebration of The Call of the Wild by Jack London.  Although we were disappointed our young adult discussion only attracted one reader, our adult version proved lively and garnered the single young adult.  Within our discussion of London’s great adventure [...]

Some of us love to explore speculative worlds. We do it for many reasons: the desire to escape, sure, but also a more positive urge to explore. Some want to make predictions about the future, or understand more about the historical past, while others find that real world issues can be explored with surprising clarity in [...]

Here are ten themes appropriate for May book group discussions: 1. SPACE DAY It’s celebrated the first Saturday of the month, which means it’s on May 1st this year. Why not read nonfiction about space, science fiction, or other novels such as James Michener’s Space or Ira Sher’s Gentlemen of Space. 2. CINCO DE MAYO [...]

I’ve just finished reading Amy Bloom’s latest collection of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, and if your book group enjoys discussing short stories, I’d suggest you take a look at this title.  I hadn’t read Bloom before, but I’d heard good things about her, and now I’d have to say — [...]

If you have a science fiction or fantasy book group, or are thinking of starting one, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on Book Group Buzzer Neil Hollands’ Fellowship in a Ring: A Guide for Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Groups, just published by Libraries Unlimited. Neil offers advice on starting and running a [...]

Not being a big poetry reader myself, I’m curious to know if book groups ever consider reading poetry collections for Poetry Month. Would they be as discussable?  Would you pick a few poems in particular to have everyone read, and then people could comment on others they liked individually? Poets.org has some interesting information on [...]

One of the great things about going to ALAs and PLAs is hearing about all these innovative and cost efficient grass roots programs that only require ingenuity and enthusiasm to get off the ground. These are the ideas we usually hear about in sessions, but sometimes the best places to discuss them in depth is [...]

In Neil’s recent column about That Problem Participant, he mentioned That-Reminds-Me-of-an-Unrelated-Personal-Story Johnson who has found a personal connection to whatever book is being read and needs to talk about. That is me today.  Although, I would argue that mine is a That-Reminds-Me-of-a-Related-Personal-Story. I read The Ghost Mountain Boys by James Campbell recently because I have [...]

I am a sucker for first novels. The good ones, I mean. I stumbled upon a delightful debut  on the new shelves at my local library branch. I have to admit that I picked it up based on its cover and upon seeing the words “punk rock.” The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni is [...]

Reading Group Choices has just released the results of the Favorite Discussible Books of 2009 survey. Here are the top ten: The Help by Kathryn Stockett The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows Loving Frank by Nancy Horan The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak Olive Kitteridge by [...]

Can we be honest? Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of all the challenges that we encounter in group facilitation stem from one problem reader who manages to burrow into each and every group and suck the energy out of everybody else. The behaviors of these misfits vary–Loutish MacDrunk, Angry Lady, Professor Know-It-All, He-Who-Hears-Voices, Mary-Mary Quite Contrary, and That-Reminds-Me-of-an-Unrelated-Personal-Story [...]

For the KCPL adult winter reading program, “Readers in the Rue Morgue,” we thought we’d offer a book and movie discussion event called Read It/Watch It. Participants would be invited to read the book before we screened the film and then contribute to the conversation after the viewing. Reading the work beforehand was not mandatory, [...]