Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

It didn’t even occur to me that these two books I’m about to mention are very well suited for the month of October. I was only thinking about what a great duo they’d make for a discussion.
I just finished Audrey Niffenegger’s sophomore effort, Her Fearful Symmetry and thought what a great pairing it would be [...]

Just in time for National Reading Group Month is one of the favorite tools of facilitators everywhere, Reading Group Choices 2010.
I know I’ve written about these little gems before and they continue to be one of my preferred go-to resources. Using the heading “Conversation Starters” instead of “discussion questions” implies that there is no specified direction [...]

In the first three posts in this series, I looked at how to research author information, reviews, and publisher and book seller content, then use these resources in your book group. These basics of book research, however, are just the most obvious resources. A creative book grouper can find dozens of other items to enhance [...]

Why is Loving Frank by Nancy Horan such a good book for discussion? My book group met to discuss Loving Frank earlier this month and the room was packed. As soon as we got started, as the conversation progressed, as new voices entered the fray, I had a feeling that we had a really good [...]

I have to admit that I was skeptical. Could a white woman in a debut novel write from the perspective of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s?
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help begins with the voice of Aibileen in 1962. Aibileen has been a domestic worker most of her life. When we meet her she [...]

Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife has been a popular choice for book groups, and the release of the movie should create even more book group buzz. 
On Shelf Awareness, I found this idea for a TTW event from Magers and Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis:
During our book club discussion of Time Traveler’s Wife, we’re having our attendees (circa 100 [...]

I’ve found a new tool to help me select books for my book groups and prepare in advance for the meetings.
It’s Women’s Fiction Authors by Rebecca Vnuk. Yes, for disclosure purposes, I will admit she’s one of my favorite library pals (because she’s the one who turned me onto Real Simple and InStyle magazines and [...]

For our monthly staff book discussion and reader’s advisory training we read Jodi Picoult’s Change of Heart.
Picoult has been incredibly popular recently in our library to the point where we made a special effort to get two fresh copies of all of her titles. I went out to the shelves just now and there is [...]

“Call me Zits.” That’s how Sherman Alexie’s novel Flight begins. Zits is a half-breed Indian 15-year-old who has been through twenty foster families after his mother died of breast cancer when he was six. He struggles with anger, loss, betrayal and violence on his path to survival and young adulthood.
When my book group discussed this slim [...]

I like when my opinions are validated.  Hopefully so does Jen Baker because in a review of Mr. White’s Confession by Robert Clark in the September 15, 2008, issue of Booklist, Baker wrote “this slow-burning stunner of a suspense novel came and went without much notice.”  That is a true statement despite the fact that [...]

For the past two weeks, the Fiction Department, with the assistance of our Teen librarians (I should also mention that our colleagues in the Arts and History Departments have also been working on a nonfiction booklist, and on supporting programs), has been feverishly working on pulling together various documents for the Reading Group Toolbox for [...]

When my book group discussed Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 2004, we had no way of knowing that the author would become the 44th President of the United States.
It made me wonder how book groups picking up the book now will read it, how Obama becoming [...]

We hadn’t discussed a nonfiction book in a while, and because the first Tuesday of the month fell on Voting Day this year, I was a little nervous about what the turnout might be. It turns out, the book group was a welcome distraction; the room was packed and discussion was as lively as ever.
We [...]

 
Finn by Jon Clinch.  Random House, 2007.
This novel begins with a body floating down the Mississippi River, skinned and bloated, face up in the water until discovered by some boys.  “I’ll bet it is old Finn,” says one of them until another, with superior knowledge of the ways of the world, announces that it must [...]

I received a delightful piece of mail today wedged in with flyers about upcoming conferences, my second ALA renewal notice, Demco catalogs, and a flask of window cleaner (Joey the Facilities guy has his mailbox above mine, I always get weird bits of metal and plumbing invoices by mistake).
My favorite book group resource, Reading [...]

Discussing plays in a reading group is challenging fun. It’s even more fun when it’s theatre with cultural images and commentary and populated with supernatural creatures. Thursday night I was treated to a full table of informed, articulate and vocal seniors discussing S. Ansky’s masterpiece of Yiddish drama, The Dybbuk.

They certainly didn’t need me [...]

Another thing that I discovered in preparing for this week’s discussion of Dave Eggers’ What is the What.  Philadelphia chose it for its 2008 One Book program.  They created an excellent resource guide with a timeline for Sudan and suggested further reading lists for children, teens and adults and a list of recommended movies. I found some links to [...]

Book group leaders who have access through their libraries to the superb reading resource database NoveList are probably already familiar with the book discussion guides it offers.  Those who don’t know about NoveList should check with their libraries to find out if the library makes it available and if they can view it (there is an [...]

 
For the spring conference of the Wisconsin Association of Public Librarians, I led a book discussion on Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.  There is nothing easier than doing a book discussion for librarians who lead book discussions.  When I train, I always talk about the perfect book discussion or what I refer to as [...]

Last week I highlighted book group support web sites where discussion leaders can find reading guides and discussion questions for their book club selections. Another excellent source for these are the publishers themselves. Most major publishers of literary fiction have figured out that distributing reading guides is a good way for them to increase word-of-mouth and [...]