Finding Good Books For Your Book Club
Sometimes it can be a bit of a daunting task finding good books for your book club. Not every book will spark a lively and meaningful discussion, no matter how good it is of its kind, so looking at what is popular and in the news at the moment is not always a good strategy. Sometimes it’s just hard to think of where else to start looking for suggestions. The more voracious readers in your club may have lots of suggestions, but they have already read the books and want to try something new. Other club members may have joined for a bit more guidance in their reading, and they are stumped. Most successful book clubs prefer to choose their books by consensus rather than be directed by a leader; so where do you start?
Now that book clubs and reading groups are all the rage, it’s actually easy to find lots of guidance, particularly online. In fact, it might almost be said that book groups are now faced with a fresh problem of choice: which book discussion group site to go to first for help!
HarperCollins.com Reading group and reading tips, reading guides, invite the author, newsletters, etc
Penguin Group (USA) Click on “Special Interest” and then on “Reading Guides”
Reading Group Center The Reading Group Source Vintage Books – Anchor Books ”Vintage and Anchor Books invite you to discover today's best selections for reading groups and access useful resources to facilitate your group discussion here at the Reading Group Center.
Reading Group Choices: Selections for Lively Book Discussions Reading Group Choices is an opinionated guide of great books to read and discuss that have been published by independent presses as well as major publishers
ReadingGroupGuides.com ReadingGroupGuides.com is part of The Book Report Network and is the first website built especially for reading groups, providing them with all they need to make their book club experience better than ever. Features include reviews, over 1400 reading group guides, a newsletter, and book group interviews.
The Modern Library: Reading Group Guides Modern Library's Reading Guides are starting points for book discussions led by readers. Modern Library is an imprint of Random House.
Now that you have a range of resources to help you find the perfect book that will spark discussion in your group, spend some time surfing the sites and all the tempting reviews, author interviews, and discussion guides. I guarantee that you will have almost as much fun as reading the books! You will find lots of books to pick from, and almost certainly you will enrich your appreciation of what you read and discuss.
Look out for my next blog, when I will be recommending some actual online book clubs that you can join. You can make comments, or alternatively just visit and see lots of examples of people commenting on their own reading.
Elizabeth
Labels: blogabook, book clubs, book groups
posted by Elizabeth @ 2:36 PM
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3 Comments:
This may seem old-fashioned, but I've been getting a lot of my book club titles from Booklist and Library Journal. Often, the book is only just published or not yet even available. Several times, I have gone out on a limb and chosen one of these titles for our Norrisville book discussion group, even though the library hasn't yet gotten it in (since we have a very long lead time between when we have to submit titles to the HCPL newsletter and when those titles are actually discussed). I use the same source for many of my own reads, since these publications are objective (not limited to the books of one publisher, for example) and exhaustive. Any library customer who wants to visit the library and ask to see some recent copies of booklist will, I guarantee, not be disappointed. The greatest part is that I tend to be the first to know about new books, even before they become "book-club-hot." I stole a march on my fellow moderators, for example, with The Kite Runner, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and now Medicus (a murder mystery set in ancient Rome and starring a doctor).
Thanks, Alan, for sharing your recommendation of Booklist and Library Journal. I admire your ability to recognize good books that are going to be hot. Perhaps if you have found a reliable source of advance news and book reviews it is better not to confuse the issue with superfluous choices.
Several of the book group sites are limited to recommending the books of specific publishers. Book reviews are limited too: each review represents the opinions of one person. Perhaps that is OK in the choosing process, but for the discussion it might be nice to have access to a discussion guide. Sometimes it is good to be surprized by things you had not thought of, and discussion guides often go deeper than reviews.
Choosing only the newest, hottest titles for discussion represents a dilemma for public library groups: when the newest things come out they may have reserves on them, which makes it difficult for discussion group members to have timely access to copies. Book group websites provide access to ideas about recent, but not too recent titles.
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