Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Can book groups find useful material on the websites of publishers and booksellers? It’s the essential modern dilemma: There’s good information to be mined, but to get it, you must run the gauntlet of sales come-ons, pop-up ads, and praise that borders on pandering. Is it worth the effort? The answer is yes, but focus [...]

Quick! What were the last five books that your group read?
Not even close, were you? I’ve been thinking about memories lately, as it seems more and more often, I have to rely on writing things down to save mine. I keep lists of what I’ve read and what I want to read. I use an account [...]

If food is part of your book group meetings, you might want to get yourself a copy of Literary Feast: The Famous Authors Cookbook from the King County Library System Foundation. Around 90 writers (most of them from the Pacific Northwest) have contributed recipes. For a discussion of a book by Elizabeth Berg you could bake her [...]

Remember when tracking down book reviews was challenging? I can remember spending hours in my university library, slogging through references in Book Review Digest, then spooling through microfilms or paging through rebound journals, then struggling to line pages up in a photocopier.
The Internet has made finding book reviews terribly easy. The magic words are simple keywords–the book title, [...]

The electronic book has arrived at one of my book groups. At my SF/fantasy group, one of our regulars has taken to bringing his electronic reader instead of actual books. I’ll admit up front, I have rather extreme views on this subject. Frankly, I think electronic books are an ungainly technology with little upside that large [...]

Did you know that Joyce Carol Oates was born a conjoined twin? The tragedy of little Carol Joyce receives oblique references in most of her sister’s writing to this day. Or that Pat Conroy chose his pen name because he was with Elvis in the week that the King died? (Does “con roi” ring any bells, French speakers?) It’s [...]

There’s great excitement at my house, as my wife has been cast as Tracy  Lord in a local community theater production of The Philadelphia Story, a play by Philip Barry. For those of you whose only reference is the 1940 film, Tracy Lord is the Katharine Hepburn part (no pressure there, huh, mon cher?) Given that our [...]

In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey spent summers working in Utah’s Arches National Park, performing a variety of park services and sometimes escaping for backcountry hiking and rafting adventures or side work for local ranchers. The result is his 1968 book Desert Solitaire. Over 40 years later, his book is still relevant, poignant, and laced [...]

With the new Meryl Streep-Amy Adams film, Julie & Julia, lighting up the national box office and Julia Child’s classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, back on the bestseller list, I’ve been wondering if book groups won’t take the hint and decide to plan some delicious discussion programs around 1) Julie Powell’s autobiographical [...]

Time for a little lesson in group dynamics: Great book groups are a joke.
They are the kind of joke where a rabbi, a Martian, and a kindergarten teacher walk into a bar. As book group leader, you’re the bartender. Before you open for business, you can do what you can to create the right space [...]

As a librarian, an endless stream of book titles washes past me, and I can only dip into a few, but there are other ways to follow the currents. Book groups have much to gain from the same kind of thinking. I’m responsible for the science fiction and fantasy collection at my library. Today, the [...]

No, I don’t mean dividing into pairs and throwing down in the middle of the reading circle, although that might be entertaining. She body slams Updike! A folding chair across the back for your egregious interruptions! Jane Austen crashes down from the top rope with pride AND prejudice!
Let’s see if I can bring this back together.
The [...]

If you could get one author, dead or alive, to write one more book, who would it be?
This intriguing question, asked by an audience member at the ALA panel I moderated in Chicago, got answers of Jane Austen from Charlaine Harris, Charles Bukowski from Charlie Huston, and Gene-Stratton Porter from Marjorie Liu. Since then, I’ve been asking the [...]

At the meeting of the Adult Reading Round Table (ARRT) Quarterly Literary Fiction Book Discussion group held this week, leader Debbie Walsh shared the method she uses with her own book group (at the Geneva Public Library) for choosing books to discuss during the coming year.  Every year, in July, the book group suggests titles that [...]

One of the most entertaining topics for discussion in book groups is the title. It’s interesting to consider why and how an author arrives at a work’s title. It’s the most important thing an author will ever do for a completed work, and usually the first thing the editor wants to change.
No one knows this [...]

Recently I led a book discussion with a group of library science students at Dominican University.  The teacher of the class, my good friend Joyce Saricks, asked me if I had a favorite question with which to begin a book discussion.  She said that another friend of ours, well-known reading enthusiast Nancy Pearl, always began [...]

Summer can be rough for book groups. Vacations deplete group numbers and those who remain steadfast don’t even get the proverbial lousy t-shirt. You should take this, well… sitting down. Why not take the group on its own armchair tour with a round of travel books?
There are some fun choices available now. I highly recommend [...]

Back on August 22nd last year I suggested the title Peace by Richard Bausch for a book discussion. I even included some suggested book discussion questions for you to use. I am happy to see that the book has just won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2009. The [...]

A couple of days ago, I took a peek at the web site of my old stamping grounds, the Oak Park Public Library, where I began my library career way back in the 60s.  I was pleased to note the library has organized a book lovers’ appreciation society called Oak Park Readers.  There are no [...]

The person who picked the book didn’t make the meeting. Strike one.
The book proved to be surprisingly difficult to obtain. Several of us couldn’t track down a copy in a timely way. Strike two.
As discussion limped to a start, there was too much awkward silence. Our book, which shall remain nameless (but its Nobel-winning author’s name rhymes with HELLO, as in HELLO!? [...]