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

In Silas House’s debut novel, the quilt that the title character is piecing together is his own life. The incident that dominates Clay’s life happened when he was only four years old: his mother, Anneth, was killed on an icy Appalachian mountain. Despite their limited time together, Clay has grown up much like Anneth: spiritual but [...]

What would you do if a loved one came to you and calmly declared that she was going to commit suicide later in the evening? It’s a horrifying scenario, and the simple premise for Marsha Norman’s 1983 play ‘Night, Mother. The pair in question are a mother and daughter who live on a quiet country [...]

Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow has a great first line: “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.” As soon as I read the first line, I wanted to know this girl’s story. Narrated by two voices, Silver Sparrow tells the story of a secret, ‘outside’ daughter, Dana, and Chaurisse, the ‘real’ daughter who is unaware of [...]

What scares you? In the staff book group at Williamsburg Regional Library, we were asked to choose books that might scare us. Here are some of the adult and young adult titles that our readers brought to the meeting. Melissa likes Victorian stories, so she chose a collection of ghost stories from that era written [...]

I’ve written previously about August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, but having just finished Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, I had to promote that work specifically. Wilson’s cycle has a play for each decade of the 20th century, and this is the entry for the 1910s. The action takes place in a boarding house, and concerns the arrival [...]

Let’s get ready to rumble! The latest Reading Group Choices book has just arrived on my desk and I’ll be using this to help select the book group titles for next year. RGC is in it’s 18th year and I have to say that I’ve kept every single one of these collections. I go back [...]

Which will make it onto your reading group lists next year? The National Book Award Finalists for 2011 were announced yesterday in Portland, OR and while there are some surprising omissions, there are also some surprising nominations. Click through any of the above links for the full lists of nominations in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and [...]

I can’t stop thinking about Olive Kitteridge. Olive, the book written by Elizabeth Strout (for which she was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), and Olive, the woman — a large-boned, blunt-talking retired schoolteacher living in a small Maine town — who dominates the pages of Strout’s engrossing novel.  Olive Kitteridge is the book [...]

With his simple, elegant style, a generous dusting of artful platitudes, and deep exploration of human nature, Leif Enger is a bit of a throwback. His writing evokes two of my favorite authors–John Steinbeck and Wallace Stegner–as well as other novelists from even earlier times. His first book, Peace like a River, was an unusual tale of American adventure that looked closely [...]

The God of Carnage (2006) is a remarkable play by the French playwright Yasmina Reza. After winning many awards in its original French, the English translation by Christopher Hampton won both Britain’s Olivier Award and Broadway’s Tony Award for Best Play. Stars including Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, [...]

I stand corrected about groups tackling larger books and even series. There are groups out there taking on series, even of the doorstop variety. For fantasy readers and book groups I wanted to share my recent discovery. Tor.com has two current threads in which both George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones books are being [...]

The last 15 minutes of every Adult Reading Round Table Steering Committee meeting are reserved for reading recommendations offered by the committee members to each other.  It’s a great way to learn what your colleagues are reading and what their reactions are to these books – and at the same time, pick up some ideas about [...]

Can science work as a nonfiction subject for book groups? With the right book choices, the answer is a resounding yes, but it helps if you can find science writers who also capture the human side of science. When the scientists are discussed alongside their work, the results are often full of drama, suspense, and [...]

Hopefully, you’re kicking back today and didn’t have to go into work. Since book groups tend to like memoirs, why not glance through some of these occupational memoirs and see what might suit? Explore the underbelly of so-called glamour professions and at the very least, learn to love your own job again. Blood, Bones & [...]

I finally found time for Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker-Prize-winning first novel, The White Tiger, and it’s easy to see why the book received so much praise. Books with unreliable narrators make for fascinating group discussions, and Balram Halwai, the titular White Tiger, is one of the most cagy cats you’ll ever encounter. Born into poverty [...]

It’s the time of year when I start gathering titles for my book groups to help them select next year’s reading. I am ever so grateful to Time Magazine for making the nonfiction choices a little easier. Recently Time published the All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books. I’m sure many of you will find titles that [...]

In the latest print issue of Entertainment Weekly 9/2/11 , you will find a great example of readers’ advisory on the Letters page. It starts with “If You Love The Help…” and two readers of EW made the same suggestion for a readalike, Like One of the Family: Conversations From a Domestic’s Life. EW staff [...]

Along with all the great new fall fiction, book group facilitators can look forward to fascinating nonfiction that will please devotees of “the real story.” Steve Paul, senior writer and arts editor at the Kansas City Star, added his two cents to the crop of autumn reads with a round-up of the most intriguing nonfiction. [...]

With Labor Day right around the corner, I’m feeling a little wistful that summer will soon be over. But with Labor Day right around the corner, I’m also feeling artistic, musical, and literary anticipation. Because the Fall Arts calendar will soon be in full swing. New theatre, new exhibits, new opera and symphonies, and the [...]

I was wandering around the stacks in my library when I found a book that I had read years ago and liked very much, Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal. It is historical fiction and would be a good choice for book groups interested in little known pieces of American history. Charity Girl is a heartbreaking, [...]