Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Can you talk about a book in 140 characters? You’ll have to if you join The Book Studio’s Twitter Book Club. Now six months old, the Twitter Book Club meets online once a month to talk about a recent book. Picks for the past few months have been Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, Lorrie Moore’s  A [...]

It’s safe to say that Oprah’s already gone global, but she’s taking on the webiverse with the upcoming discussion of Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan.
On Monday, November 9, a live discussion will be simulcast from Oprah.com, CNN.com, and Facebook. Anderson Cooper will also participate in the conversation with Oprah and Uwem Akpan [...]

Today the Readers’ Advisory Section of the Wisconsin Library Association discussed a great book for our purposes: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
This book is such a complex overlaying of issues that to try to explain the plot becomes a challenging enterprise. Let me say that it involves Leopold Gursky, an old man now [...]

Here’s a blog concept that voracious readers and book groupers should get behind. Shelf Renewal (http://www.shelfrenewal.com/) is a new project by Chicago-area librarians Rebecca Vnuk and Karen Kleckner. I stole their cheeky tagline for the title of this blog entry. Fighting the stream of publicity for new books that are already getting plenty of attention, [...]

While I’m Falling by Laura Moriarty is one of the titles that has been selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a National Reading Group Month Great Group Read. In this coming-of-age novel, Veronica’s chaotic junior year in college gets even messier when her recently-divorced mother shows up, needing a place to live. Midwest book groups [...]

My wife just made me aware of a new online book club provided by the editors of Real Simple magazine.  Here’s how the club works:  every month, one of the editors chooses four books they consider to be great for discussion and asks readers to vote on them; the title with the most votes wins.  Once [...]

The winners of two major literary prizes, the Man Booker and the Nobel, were recently announced. 
The Man Booker Prize, awarded each year to  the “very best” full-length novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, went to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall , a fictionalized biography of Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall’s [...]

The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey is one of the Great Group Reads selected by the Women’s National Book Association Reading Group Month committee. Abigail, an actress, owns the titular London house and lives upstairs with Sean, a struggling Keats scholar.  Abigail’s best friend from college, Dara, is a therapist who who occupies the garden flat. [...]

Hard boiled detective novels and speculative fiction are not common subject matter for book groups, but that’s a dirty shame. Some of the best fiction being written these days is in the genres. A coincidence in my recent reading schedule has left me thinking about books in which these two genres coincide.
I just received Strange [...]

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist  is one of the titles that has been selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a National Reading Group Month Great Group Read. It’s a dystopian tale about a society in which some people are considered dispensable–in this case, older men and women who are childless. At age 50 for women and age 60 [...]

Appassionata by Eva Hoffman is one of the titles that has been selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a National Reading Group Month Great Group Read.  Described by the New York Times as “intelligent and affecting”  and by the Washington Post as a “serious pleasure,” this novel about an American concert pianist who becomes involved with [...]

I’m always looking for another group to partner with for a book discussion. I have found that groups associated with local arts organizations are one of the best and most receptive groups to approach. The arts organization gets to offer a new activity for members and the library gets to promote programs and services to [...]

A week ago my crime fiction book discussion group started its new season with an author whose work we have been reading, one book each round. Her name is Minette Walters and we have worked our way up to her 2005 title, The Devil’s Feather.
This is a rather challenging story to read as it deals [...]

Book groups take note: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has won the Booker Prize for 2009.
Due out in the United States on October 13th, this is probably the most accessible novel to win the award in many years. Mantel is an experienced English writer whose work has received many awards and covered many subjects. In her early career, [...]

Or maybe not. Possibly this is news to everyone who reads this blog, especially the contributors and facilitators. I found this image worthy of a quirked smile while I was reading PostSecret this morning.
I have attended one or two book group gatherings without having read the selected title. I have even facilitated discussion of a [...]

Life is short and there are a lot of books to read and to discuss. Novels are the most popular reading group choice and there are lots of novels to choose from. In fact, there are approximately 50,000 fiction titles published every year in the United States and about 10,000 of those are new titles. [...]

The Millions website asked a panel of 56 authors and critics to name the best fiction published since the year 2000. The compiled results should be interesting fodder for book groups. How many have you read? How many has your book group discussed?
Here’s their list of the top twenty. The top five were Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Edward [...]

As I mentioned in a previous post, October is National Reading Group Month, and for the second year in a row, Book Group Buzz has been chosen by the The Women’s National Book Association as the official National Reading Group Month partner blog.
Events are planned for the WNBA’s 10 chapter cities. The signature event, a breakfast and book-signing with [...]

October is National Reading Group Month. This program of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) was launched in 2007 “to promote reading groups and to celebrate the joy of shared reading.” Once again, Book Group Buzz  is thrilled to be chosen by the WNBA as a National Reading Group Month partner.
Here’s the 2009 list of Great Group Reads [...]

If you’re looking for something different for your book group, follow the Bernardsville Public Library’s Saturday Samplers on its blog.  This group aims to seek out interesting reads beyond the usual discussion fare. This Saturday, they’ll be talking about Robert Curson’s Crashing Through, the story of entrepreneur and Olympian Mike May, blind since age three, whose vision was restored by a [...]