Books, Readers & Beyond: #54

1) I have been a member of several book clubs in the past (my membership usually ended when I moved) and run on at my library now. Of the past book clubs I have attended, only one worked really well. I stopped attending one book club after the moderator had us read half of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol one month, and the other half the next month. That book is about 100 pages long. One meeting would have sufficed.

The book club that worked was an all girls book club I attended during grad school. We were all at a similar place in life and had a fantastic time reading classics we'd missed in school and meeting to eat, discuss and gossip. This and the book club I currently run are the most successful ones I have personally attended.

In regards to online vs. in-person, I prefer an in-person book club. For one thing, I love how chaotic and noisy book clubs can be. When a good discussion (either on the book or that favorite tv show) really gets going, there are interruptions, talking over each other, cheering, and the occasionally table slap. They are fun. You don't get this same feel in an online book club.

2) As previously mentioned, I already run a book club at my branch. It has grown over the past year and has become a fairly well established club. The members get along well and even do things together outside the library. Sometimes we pick books everyone likes (good discussions), sometimes half and half (bad discussions) and sometimes everyone dislikes the book (great discussions!). No matter how we feel about the book, though, we always have fun.

I did attempt to find a title to suggest to my group using Reading Group Guides. Ironically, the teen book recommendations sent me to another site I've looked at before, teenreads.com. We have already read several books on the list and there is one on here I've been trying to get the book club to read for months: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I have had several people (and now a website) tell me this is a fantastic book club book. Maybe with these additional positive reviews, we will actually read it. (There is also a list of discussion questions for this book, which would be incredibly helpful.)

3) I searched for One for the Money by Janet Evanovich on LibraryThing, where it had an average rating of 3.98 stars out of 4, and on Goodreads, where it had an average rating of 4.07 stars out of 5. The LibraryThing rating is a tad higher, but both are comparable. I think it is safe to assume that a lot of people really, really love this book! Frankly, I don't find this surprising at all what with how popular that series is just with library patrons.