Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

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 [...]

Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife was a favorite  book group choice, and her newest novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, should be popular as well.  It’s a ghost story involving twins who inherit a London flat which happens to be located next to the historic Highgate Cemetery. Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman praises Niffenegger’s “discerning eye and slyly gothic [...]

My wife and I have a habit of watching all of the works of a particular actor or actress as a way to see films we have never viewed or to see again films we haven’t seen in awhile. We use the American Film Institute’s great lists as the basis for this slightly obsessive [...]

Despite CIA-level layers of secrecy and security, Oprah’s next book club pick has been leaked, according to an article in The Washington Post.  It’s Say You’re One of Them, by Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian-born priest who teaches in Zimbabwe.  The book, the author’s first,  is a collection of five stories set in five difference African [...]

The winners of the second annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards were just announced.  There were nominations in 15 categories, including Best Reviews, Best KidLit Blog, and Most Chatty.
In the Best Book Club Blog category, the winner is Books on the Nightstand. Other nominees were 5 Minutes for Books, APOOO Book Club, Book Club Girl, and Every Day I [...]

Did you know that this is Book Blogger Appreciation Week? Neither did I, but when I found out I was prompted to pay an overdue visit to Book Club Girl, one of the nominees for Best Book Club Blog. Book Club Girl works in publishing, so she knows books, but she “vows to talk about books from all [...]

This month our staff book discussion subject was “Bestsellers”. Being the book discussion leader, I decided to reach for a mega-book discussion title that I had not yet read: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Let’s get the negative off my chest: I did not find the writing style of this [...]

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 [...]

Barbara Mead of Reading Group Choices wants Book Group Buzz readers to know that Reading Group Choices 2010: Selections for Lively Book Discussions, 16th edition, is now available:
Reading Group Choices 2010, the annual publication from the book club resource, Reading Group Choices, has arrived! This wonderful booklet contains 75 books carefully chosen to be of interest [...]

I can’t think of a single person I know who reads and doesn’t also listen intently to a particular form of music. Book group members are always talking about what they listen to while they read, unless they are listening to what they read.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to discuss music in the same way we [...]

By way of today’s article in The New York Times  about reading on the subway, I’ve discovered The Subway Book Club, which started in July with one man’s idea of choosing what to read next by looking around the subway car at fellow riders’  book choices. So far those have included, among others, The Emperor’s Children by [...]

Keir alerted me to an item from yesterday’s New York Times, “How to Discuss ‘Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters’.”  Among the questions proposed in the discussion guide for the latest Jane Austen/horror mash-up:
Have you ever been attacked by giant lobsters, either literally of figuratively?
 What would be worse: being eaten by a shark or consumed [...]

Am I the last person to know this?  (Don’t answer that question!) October is National Reading Group Month. I lead a book discussion but I have never received a card.
According to this article the Women’s National Book Association has sponsored this for two previous years.
So, now that the word is out (to me), I am going [...]