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As I was thinking about recommending a book next week, I realized the sexuality in it could make some readers uncomfortable. As I was pondering how to approach this, I started wondering – do you usually make a point of reading a book before setting as a group selection? While it’s true that I often [...]

A book that highlighted great debates caused some debate of its own at a special Kansas City Public Library discussion of Theodore White’s narrative nonfiction classic about politics, The Making of the President 1960. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the debates that ushered in modern political campaigning as we know it now and [...]

This week my book group discussed Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. If you haven’t read this book, here is a bit of background–it’s been described by many as a thriller and for a literary novel it is surprisingly hard to put down. It is narrated entirely by one man, Changez, a Pakistani man who invites [...]

I’ve been reading In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.  Published in 1994, it’s a fictional account of the Mirabal family, which lost three sisters to assassination in 1960. The sisters had been active in protesting the despotic regime of Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic with strong-arm tactics from 1930 until his assassination [...]

If your book group has read any of the Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Girl Who Played with Fire; The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) you might be interested to know that in conjunction with its release of the films based on the novels, Music Box Films has made available [...]

Here are ten themes that your book group might consider exploring in November: 1. ABRAHAM LINCOLN This year commemorates the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s election to the presidency on November 6th, 1860. Try James M. MacPherson’s Abraham Lincoln: A Presidential Life, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, or Gore Vidal’s historical novel Lincoln. You should probably pass [...]

Barbara Mead of Reading Group Choices e-mailed me to say that the 2011 of edition of Reading Group Choices is now available. This edition includes more than 65 titles selected for their special interest to book groups. “Conversaton Starters” for each book are designed to stimulate lively discussions. Barbara writes, “We gave 200 hundred copies of [...]

Having finally plunged into Facebook myself about a month ago, followed closely by Booklist and our blogs, I’ve been intrigued by the allure of social networking and the way that people communicate (or sometimes fail to communicate) with these tools. So when I saw the effective trailer, then heard the buzz for the new film [...]