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

Here are ten ideas for your upcoming October book group meetings:

1. GERMANY

Deutschland hits the trifecta this month: It’s German-American Heritage month, the 20th anniversary of the reunification of East and West Germany on October 3rd, and the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest. Tell me that doesn’t deserve a little book group love! Break out the strudel, the wurst, or the beer steins and spend the month reading books set in Germany or by authors of German descent. How about Günter Grass, Ursula Hegi, Bernard Schlink, Patrick Süskind, Erich Maria Remarque, W.G. Sebald, or Thomas Mann?

2. FAMILY HISTORY MONTH

You could celebrate this by talking about genealogy, but that might be a little heavy, especially for your readers who aren’t interested. Instead, why not assign each reader to read and report on a book beloved by a parent or other ancestor?

3. PBS

The Public Broadcasting System started broadcasting on October 7th, 1970. Celebrate the 40th anniversary by having readers do a book/program comparison on any PBS film or series. There is no shortage of adaptations from the Masterpiece programs, and many of the other documentaries or series have a companion book.

4. NATIONAL BOOK MONTH

It’s sponsored by the National Book Association, so why not read books that have received their august National Book Awards? If your meeting is after October 13th, you can also discuss the newly announced crop of finalists for the 2010 award (and schedule some of those books for later meetings!)

5. FACE YOUR FEARS DAY

That’s the commemorative holiday scheduled for October 12th. In honor of it, encourage your readers to try a book from a genre or subject matter that they normally avoid. Let’s make some breakthroughs, people!

6. MAGIC WEEK

Speaking of genres that some people fear unreasonably, you could commemorate Magic Week (October 25th-31st) by reading works of fantasy fiction this month. If straight out fantasy is too much for some of your readers, try the literary variety, perhaps Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, John Connoly’s The Book of Lost Things, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or anything by Alice Hoffman, Franz Kafka, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

7.  CRIME PREVENTION MONTH

Does reading crime fiction help prevent crime or encourage it? I suspect you crime fiction fanatics are secretly deviant, and we’re probably only encouraging you to get in trouble, but at least you’ll have a good time at book group. Just don’t stage your own personal production of And Then There Were No Readers.

8. GLOBAL DIVERSITY AWARENESS MONTH

How better to raise awareness than to read books in global settings or try world writers in translation? Try, for example, the works of Nuruddin Farah, Dai Sijie, Thrity Umrigar, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or Da Chen.

9. BIRTHDAY BIOGRAPHIES

October’s birthday children include Julie Andrews, Jimmy Carter, Mahatma Gandhi, Groucho Marx, Jesse Jackson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lenny Bruce, Paul Simon, Angela Lansbury, Oscar Wilde, Bela Lugosi, Carrie Fisher, Pablo Picasso, Emily Post, Dylan Thomas, Bill Gates, Dan Rather, John Lennon, and Theodore Roosevelt.

10. HALLOWEEN

Well, of course this is one of the themes… I wouldn’t trick you! Whether your group’s taste runs more to classic ghost stories, Stephen King novels, or the latest splatterpunk, October is the month to try something scary. I recommend Justin Cronin’s The Passage, Mira Grant’s Feed, Daryl Gregory’s Pandemonium, Joe Hill’s Horns, or The Seance by John Harwood.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Adult Books, Book Club Tips, Good Books for Book Clubs, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.