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I’ve continued to update my 2010 Megalist, my annual compilation of best-of-the-year lists. This week’s additions included some big players, such as the New York Times and The New Yorker. The 2010 Megalist is up to 60 sources, with more to come, and can be downloaded from my other blogging home, Blogging for a Good [...]

At a recent meeting of the Adult Reading Round Table book discussion group, one of the members mentioned that she can only select titles for her seniors book club that are available in regular print, large print, and audiobook formats, and this factor sometimes limits her choices if she is looking for a particular kind [...]

I’ve been browsing through Bernard A. Drew’s Literary Afterlife. It’s essentially a bibliography of works in which one author has used the characters created by another.  It strikes me that it might be fun to devote a book group meeting to reading such pastiches. Don’t get me wrong. For the most part, these are not [...]

I decided to read Lynne Reid Bank’s popular 1960s novel, The L-Shaped Room, after it kept popping up as a book I might like as I searched online. Customer reviews made it sound like a good read. I knew that it was about pre-Pill, pre-abortion England and that in it a young girl becomes pregnant [...]

One of the lions of American literature, particularly southern literature, passed away Thursday at the age of 77. If your book group has not sampled the works of Reynolds Price, then now might be a good time to consider them. Price was a Rhodes Scholar and a long-time professor at Duke University. As a writer, [...]

You don’t have to consult more than one source to get the results of all of the best-books-of-the-year lists in one spreadsheet. For the third consecutive year, I’ve been compiling all of the results, counting up all the votes, from all of the major review sources into one “megalist.” So far, I’ve compiled about 50 [...]

Like many book club leaders, I’m always on the lookout for news of what other groups are doing.  Whenever I visit my mother-in-law in Urbana, Illinois, I make a point to check her local newspaper to learn about the activities of the book clubs in her area.  Recently I discovered that the Champaign Public Library has encouraged [...]

In the first part of this post, I made the case for why your group needs new members and how to attract them. Now the big question: a new reader has walked through the door… What can you do to keep him or her coming back? Here are some ideas: 1) IF THE SHOE DOESN’T [...]

To make the best sourdough bread, a master baker begins each batch of dough with starter, a concoction of wild yeast, water, and flour that creates the bacteria that makes the bread so tasty. The best starters are very old, building up a strong base flavor as they burble away in the refrigerator. It’s not just about [...]

As a new year approaches, I always like to take time to ponder my reading habits and make a few resolutions for the upcoming year. Here are my reading resolutions for 2011: 1) MAKE TIME TO BE CAPTIVATED BY BOOKS As a professional book person, I have a dozen tricks to sneak a few extra [...]

Here are the remaining titles from the Williamsburg Regional Library’s staff book group meeting. Our theme was works that involved winter settings. Cela’s first choice was unusual. Robert Masello’s Blood and Ice is a tale that blends historical fiction, horror, adventure, science, and vampires. A contemporary South Pole researcher and journalist discovers a man and [...]

In my last post, I posted some puzzles from one of my book group’s annual Christmas celebration. Here are the promised answers: The first list of items represented the Chronicles of Narnia in this order: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (a picture of Barry Sanders, a Detroit Lion for his entire career) The [...]

Twenty-three members of the Williamsburg Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Group converged at my house last night for our 7th annual Christmas Party and Reindeer Games. I think it’s the sign of a healthy group when we get one of our biggest turnouts each year in the middle of the holiday season. These readers enjoy each other’s company, and [...]

I just heard a great idea for a year-end book group meeting. Book Swap. I won’t be doing a book swap this year since we have another activity planned, but it’s definitely on the calendar for next year and it doesn’t even have to wait until next December. Encourage everyone to come to the next [...]

My question to you this week, readers, is – Does your book discussion group have a name?  If so, tell us what it is and how you came to it. I’ve participated in groups with funny/cutesy names, library groups with descriptive names (“5 o’Clock Readers” pretty  much says it all, huh?), but mostly, groups with [...]

The Trail Blazers book group has called the Trails West branch of the Kansas City Public Library home for almost ten years. They started gathering to discuss reading in April of 2001. This eclectic band of readers are open to almost any kind of books (not too fond of horror, they freely admit) and have [...]

If you lead a book group I’m sure you’ve heard something like this: “Why is everything we read so dark?”, or, ”I don’t want to be depressed, why don’t we read something fun?” Just as people complain about sadness in Oprah’s selections, readers have probably voiced similar thoughts in your group. While I think we can agree [...]

As I’ve done for three years now, I’ve begun to compile all of those Best Books of the Year choices into one spreadsheet. When I’m done, you’ll be able to see how many awards and best of the year votes all of your 2010 favorites have received. This year, I’m adding a note after each [...]

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of attending the Second Annual Book Lovers and Book Clubs Conference in Kansas City. In its inaugural year, conference founder and organizer, Kim Riley, brought the gathering to a small community center and was overwhelmed with the positive response and number of attendees. This year, Kim looked [...]

It’s the time of year when many book groups set the calendar for the upcoming year. I’ve had good luck with balloting as a means for selecting themes or titles. Ballots give democratic input to the selection process while still allowing group leaders to retain some measure of control. Here’s how: First, filter which books or [...]