Booksprouts another resource for starting or running a book club

Booksprouts: The Online Community for Book Clubs

The other day a friend drew my attention to this website called Booksprouts. Booksprouts' goal is to make book clubs a fun and easy experience for everyone.

Reading is an usually solitary experience but it doesn't always have to be. Sometimes it is nice to bring in other individuals. Talking about books can enhance your reading experience and tighten social contacts.

If you feel like sharing your reading experiences with people close to you, one way to do this is start a book club. Booksprouts recognizes that this can be difficult to do. Friends may live and work far apart, and it is hard to find the time when everyone in a group can meet. Booksprouts' solution to the problem of time and geography is to provide a forum for online book groups.

It is hard to organize a book group, and once you are organized it is hard to choose the books to read. Booksprouts say they make it easy to start a club, join a club, invite your friends, choose a book, and discuss. Booksprouts introduces Book Choices to help book clubs agree on what to read, they automatically create and organize online discussion spaces for each book, and they help clubs manage their member lists and their club meetings.

I looked at the Booksprouts website and found it very easy to understand and navigate. You can search for a book group to belong to by geography, subject, author, or title. You can start your own book group. You can find books by title, subject or author and you can see a list of current hot books. You could use the site just as a resource to find books to discuss in your existing group.

The site is still in Beta mode, so I did not see many reviews of the site. At least one public library is using it. The reviews I did see could not understand how the site will make money. I found the Booksprouts blog which gives a rationale of why they started the site. At the moment it is free to sign up to join or create a book group. Some groups are open and some are invitation only.

Some reviewers wondered why we need yet another book sharing site, mentioning LibraryThing, Shelfari, etc. You should check the site out for yourself. If you have been struggling with finding a suitable book group, online may be the way to go.

Mysterious Minds book group goes on field trip

Our August meeting of the Mysterious Minds (the Bel Air Library’s mystery book discussion group) was out of the ordinary for us, but one of our most pleasant evenings yet! We didn’t meet at the library but at Tudor Hall (Harford County’s own historic treasure – the Booth family home). The Center for the Arts currently occupies Tudor Hall and staff person Kathy Cochran gave us a brief tour. After that, we enjoyed the lovely summer evening on the patio as we discussed the various mysteries that still surround Lincoln’s assassination at the hand of John Wilkes Booth. Not our typical mystery discussion, but our group likes to mix things up!

Step Ball Change by Jeanne Ray

This week I decided to write about a book I have been reading for a discussion group I belong to. This month the group will discuss the genre known as "Hen Lit."

"Hen Lit," though not a very flattering or politically correct designation, refers to the popular fiction genre that focuses on one woman or a group of female friends and the vicissitudes of their lives as they turn sixty or so. The tone is generally warm, gentle and optimistic, but above all humorous. The emphasis is on friendship and family.

I picked out the following title and can recommend it heartily as a pleasant and easy quick read, perhaps even a beach read:

Step Ball Change by Jeanne Ray

This warm and humorous book is sure to appeal to readers who like stories of a strong, older female main character who shares with us the joys and sorrows of her family relationships. Sixty-plus Caroline lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, just as she has done for years with her public-defender husband Tom. Caroline has succesfully raised four children, while at the same time owning and running a prosperous dance studio. Caroline is a mentor and mother figure to all, including the little girls in her studio. At the same time she maintains her humanity: we warm to her disorganization at home, her guilty wish to have quality time alone with her husband, her attempts to understand her children, the fact that though she suffers from arthritis she remains young and vulnerable at heart. Chaos breaks loose at Caroline’s home when her sister announces she is getting divorced and turns up at her doorstep, her daughter announces her engagement yet can’t seem to decide whom she loves, and the foundations of the house are discovered to be in imminent danger of collapse. It is obvious from the beginning that with love and patience all dilemmas will happily be resolved – it is such a pleasure finding out just how!

Some points you might like to consider when reading or discussing Step Ball Change:

The unusual title refers to a dance step. I understood it as a metaphor for all the changes going on in Caroline's life and how quick-footed she has to be to cope with them. I also understood the decay in the foundations of Caroline's house to be a metaphor for what was happening within the family, as well as a useful device with which to bring strangers into the family mix. Do you agree with me, and do you think these literary devices work or not?

Reviewers of hen lit usually maintain that in general the characters are more superficially drawn than in more serious traditional fiction. Do you agree in this case? The publisher of this book said that we feel we have known these characters all our lives. What do you say?

Examples of the genre:

The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love by Joan Medlicott

The Elegant Gathering of White Snows by Kris Radish

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind by Ann B. Ross

Angry Housewives Eating Bon-bons by Lorna Landvik

Good Grief by Lolly Winstan

Not-So-Perfect Man by Valerie Frankel

Harlequin began publishing in this genre under the name Harlequin Next http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html?cid=357

The Known World by Edward Jones

In April 2007 a group in Edgewood discussed The Known World by Edward Jones. This book has won multiple prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The ideas in it are complex, of moral weight and intellectual and emotional power, yet subtly expressed through a story that draws you in and then unfolds in a book that is difficult to put down; though sometimes you just have to take a breather!

The book begins with a crisis which precipitates many changes in the "known world," the circumscribed world of an antebellum slave plantation. The crisis is the death of the plantation owner and the upheaval that this creates for his "property" - including his slaves - and his family. The interesting thing is that Henry Townsend, the property owner, was once a slave himself.

This is a book that takes a commitment of time, as it is so dense and complex. There is a large cast of characters, and the minutiae of the life they lead is woven in fascinating detail into the story. The characters, their relationships and motivations, are so convincing and compelling that the reader becomes emotionally involved in their fates.

The time-line of the plot is not straightforward but moves from the present and Henry’s death, to the past, and then back to the future. The past reveals how a former slave became a slave-owner. The future is revealed rather like a prophecy. It is this prefiguring, together with the simple, measured, factual narrative, that at times gives the book an almost Biblical character.

The book delivers without ever being heavy-handed a decided indictment of a society that depended on slavery. Subtly revealing the motives of the characters through their actions, the author inexorably builds up a picture of how slavery really ruined every part of society.

It is difficult to make suggestions for book discussion points without giving away the pleasures of the book to people who have not read it. I believe this book will appeal to readers who enjoy complex characterization and like to see characters develop. Edward Jones' characters are complicated: the good ones do bad things and the bad ones do good things. Enjoy coming to understand what drives them. See if you agree with me that Edward Jones' depiction of people and society in the era of slavery is remarkably free of stereotypes.

This book will certainly appeal to lovers of historical fiction, especially historical fiction that shows a depth of research into the period. For me, the book helped me understand more how such an inhumane institution as slavery could persist, especially after it ceased to benefit anybody. Look for occasions where Jones shows how slavery affected both white and black in the most insidious ways.

$64 Tomato

NORRISVILLE BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP
THE $64 TOMATO BY William Alexander
April 2007

The Norrisville Book Discussion Group had a rollicking good time discussing the April 2007 selection, The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. Our resident (retired) Home Ec and Sex Education teacher provided the goodies this month: The famous “kiss me cake,” winner of the second ever Pillsbury bake-off. It seems that as the winner was preparing an orange cake, her husband came home in an amorous mood and distracted her from her project. With her mind on other things, she mixed the frosting in with the batter and created an instant classic.

Alexander’s more-or-less true account of his family’s move to a small town, and his subsequent obsession with creating the garden of his dreams is excruciating, instructive to the uninitiated, and laugh-aloud funny. Techie Alexander, his newly minted physician wife, and their two children move from Westchester County, New York to the perfect hamlet far from the madding crowd. Their new house, notorious in town for being dilapidated and uninhabitable, fails to smother their enthusiasm. But when the author sets out to wrestle a behemoth of a garden out of the untouched landscape, his neighbor Larry, his wife, and especially his two kids can only pity him. And even pity is difficult to muster, since Alexander willfully takes the wrong road at every fork-decision that he comes to. In fact, some readers will find his monumentally poor judgment a little irritating. Most of our group, however, appreciated the author’s self-deprecating tone and many disasters, not a few of which they themselves have experienced in the past. It felt good to see someone else get their lumps for a change, from unreliable and downright dishonest contractors to industrial strength weeds, to the shattering of the organic pipe dream, to the endless hours sucked up by this all-consuming hobby. Alexander’s story follows a path that is not entirely chronological and arrow-straight, which only seems to emphasize the atmosphere of out-of-control living described in the book. Yet our group never gave up wanting to know how it would all turn out, hoping for at least a partial victory over nature and human nature.

The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman

The Edgewood Branch of Harford County Public Library has three book clubs – one that meets in the branch on the second Thursday of each month, one that meets at the senior center on the fourth Tuesday, and one that also meets on the fourth Tuesday in the branch, but features books by African American authors. Recently, the senior group and the Thursday group both read and discussed the same book: Elinor Lipman’s The Inn at Lake Devine.

I would be delighted if one or two of the Edgewood group members would add their comments to this post. How did you enjoy the book? Did anyone else at the discussion influence how you now think of the book?

Below is a short description of The Inn at Lake Devine, and then one or two discussion points that I hope will tempt new readers to try it.

The Inn at lake Devine was first published in 1998 and has become a classic example of Elinor Lipman’s gentle and romantic social commentaries. The story starts in 1962 and is a portrait of the social upheaval and prejudice of the 1960s and 1970s. The story deals with the serious subject of anti-Semitism, though Ms. Lipman handles it with a light touch: one reviewer called the book, “delightful,” and, “both entertaining and thought-provoking.” In fact, there is considerable humor in the book as well as some distinctly eccentric characters.

The main character, Natalie Marx is a sharp, sensitive teenager growing up in a tight-knit Jewish family. She is shocked, when in response to a query, her mother receives a note from a Vermont inn saying more or less that Jews are not welcome to stay there. Natalie becomes fixated on the people who could say such things, and she does all she can to see them face to face. She and her father use an assumed name and visit the inn from their vacation house the other side of the lake. Another year, Natalie enveigles an invitation to stay there with a friend, blending in as one of her family. A good ten years later, when Natalie is invited to her friend’s wedding at the inn, she can finally infiltrate the bastions as herself. Her professional and romantic life become hopelessly entangled with the rigidly prejudiced proprietor and her two sons when, despite a tragedy, Natalie falls in love. Will love triumph and put prejudice to rout?

Different reviewers have said the following things about The Inn at Lake Devine. Would you agree or disagree?...

“Skillfully interweaving the bittersweet narrative with threads of both tragedy and comedy, Lipman displays a healthy amount of empathy and affection for her flawed and slightly eccentric cast of characters.”

“…this very funny novel…”

“…skewering of assimilation and cultural diversity…”

“Natalie's search for answers to unanswerable questions…”

For more information about Edgewood branch book groups, please call 410-612-1600.

You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

The “Novel Ideas” book group meets at the Jarrettsville branch of HCPL at 10:30 AM on the fourth Monday of each month. Recently they selected a title that strikes me as being an innovative choice and a difficult book to discuss. They chose You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett, a debut short story collection that explores different aspects of depression and mental illness.

As Claire Dederer, a reviewer at Amazon.com says, “Adam Haslett drags into the light subjects often left in the cellar.” Most of the stories are told from the viewpoint of the mentally ill, though one is told by the doctor in the case. Others are stories are about closeted homosexuals: boys who are coming to terms with their identity and men who never have.

Despite the sensational topics, Haslett writes quietly, plainly and with truth and sensitivity about the people in his stories. As Ms. Dederer said, “this is a beautifully written collection that's as heartfelt as it is intelligent.”

Members of the Novel Ideas group, and anyone else who has read the book, do please add your comments to this posting. Below are some questions that might bear discussion, or contribute your own insights to the dialog.

Did you find a book of short stories difficult to discuss? Did you find that the collection had any themes that made it hang together?

What did you think of the beauty of the writing?

In The Good Doctor, Haslett writes of Frank, a young MD, "The fact was he still felt like a sponge, absorbing the pain of the people he listened to." In your opinion, is the reader of these stories likely to be able to cope with all the pain of all the people?

The next meeting of the Novel Ideas will be at 10:30 AM on Monday, April 23, 2007. They will discuss When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. For information call (410) 692-7887.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan wins Texas Book Award

Timothy Egan, a reporter for the New York Times, has won the fourth
biennial Texas Christian University Texas Book Award for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. The $5,000 award is sponsored by the Friends of the TCU Library and TCU Press.

The book has also won other awards:

The 2006 National Book Award for nonfiction
The Oklahoma Book Award
The Western Heritage(Wrangler)Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

The Worst Hard Time would be a good book to read following The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin. A few days ago I posted a description of The Children’s Blizzard, which was read recently by one of HCPL’s book groups.

In The Worst Hard Time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan follows, in a similar scheme to Laskin, a few pioneering families and an overwhelming disaster that overtook them, this time during the period of the Dust Bowl. In this book the disasters the families lived through, both economic and ecological, were man-made. Egan writes how eight years of drought on the windy plains, which had been ploughed up for wheat, led to an endless series of dust storms or “black blizzards.” "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains." As Egan shows, the plains were not suited to arable farming and with the drought all the topsoil was blown into the air. Like Laskin, Egan spends a while describing the hardy Americans and immigrants who settled the area, desperate in the Depression for a piece of land and lured there by the false claims of promoters. Egan interviewed actual survivors of those hard times, and the book is filled with tales of courage and suffering. As well as stories of privation, there are horrific accounts of the effects of the black blizzard, such as the "dust pneumonia" which killed both young and old. Publishers Weekly said, “With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.”

BlogaBook Points of Discussion

Publishers Weekly compares The Worst Hard Time to the novels of Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis. What do you think?

What remains most in your mind when you have finished this book?

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