Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the fourth day of the month is "Information."
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I was reading a blog post about how to pick a good book club book and I found myself disagreeing with the post very vehemently and wondering what world I was living in that my book club experience was so very different from this blogger's. And then I wondered if she really thought the things that she had written or if she was doing it for some reason having to do with diplomacy. Here are my two big disagreements. Let me know who you think is right.
1) The blogger recommends you choose a book you've already read. We generally will nix a book for book club if someone has read it. Reasons: It really sucks if you read a book and liked and no one else likes it. If you suggest a book at our book club and you've looked at reviews and thought it might work, then no one holds you accountable if the book doesn't go over well. With the exception of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, no book is universally loved, so there's no need to make someone put up a book they really like under the firing squad! Also, part of book club is to get people to read different books and it really defeats the purpose if we're always discussing books people have already read.
2) The blogger recommends reading books between 150-300 pages, citing that shorter is better. I did some research here and looked at the last twenty-four books my book club has read. Only five of our books were in that range! Our average page count was about 392 pages and even if you took out Cloud Cuckoo Land (626 pages) and The Luminaries (848 pages), the average was still over 350 pages. I feel like if we read super short books, we'd get lots of complaints about poor character/plot development or that a book didn't really go in-depth into the topics we wanted to cover. Also, I feel like even your average romance novel is over 300 pages!
Generally I agreed with other recommendations that the blogger made.
1) Choose a variety of topics. Early on we went on a WWII spree and actually banned WWII books for a while. Then we basically switched to WWI books. Ha! It's been awhile since we've read a war book, so I might recommend Code Named Helene as our next book (based on Stephany's recommendation) and see what people think. But we've read domestic dramas, war books, humorous books, and some experimental fiction. It's always fun to see what resonates with different people.
2) Pick a book that people can easily access. Our book this month is really popular right now and I regret allowing people to choose it because I'm still #57 on the list at the public library and had to have my husband get it through his university account and I know people had to buy it and that's not ideal. I try to make sure books have been out for at least a year before we try to read them. I also have vetoed books that aren't available at all through our public library system. This does mean that sometimes we don't read books that are self-published or published through a small press, but I don't want people to have to spend money on book club if they don't want to. (I mean me, of course. I don't want to buy books!)
3) Make sure the book has meaty enough themes to have a good discussion about. We've read a number of books that no one really liked, but we've had amazing discussions about (The Women in the Castle comes to mind), books we've liked and had a great discussion about (Cloud Cuckoo Land), and books that become shorthand for things we want to avoid (I won't call these out). So, even if I don't like a book club book, I'm usually excited for book club because it will probably be fertile ground for interesting observations and conversation. I really like the book is divisive because that's when things get really good.
What do you think? Who's right and who's wrong? Does picking a book club book make you nervous? Have you ever picked one that was a real winner or a real stinker?
I'm going to take your side with this. I can see picking a book that people have read before once in a while but all the time??? Yes a person can read only so many 1,000 page books that a person can read but a 300 page limit isn't the answer.
ReplyDeleteI will never ever belong to a "real" book club b/c I just don't have the time and my DNF rate is so high but I do love our informal blog book club.
I really like that my book club forces me to read books I'd never choose on my own. I would probably DNF a fair number of them if not for book club and that's probably good for me.
DeleteI've never belonged to a book club, but I'll also agree with you on this. I definitely wouldn't want to make everyone read a book I've read and loved, for the reasons you cited. Also, if you stick 150-300 page books, that would REALLY limit you. Most books are over 300 pages. Now I'm curious to know who this mystery blogger is! It sounds like the other suggestions were good.
ReplyDeleteI sent you the name of the other blogger. I wasn't trying to hide it, but it seems like bad form to slag on her. I guess I'm just really curious what her book clubs look like!
DeleteOh, I am SO interested in this topic! I Have Thoughts. Forgive me for the huge comment to follow.
ReplyDeleteI have been in a book club for about two years (meeting every 2 months), and our method is that one person suggests 4 books (which should be available in print, ebook, and audio if possible, for different reading styles), then everyone rank-votes them and the most popular is chosen. (One of our members is tech-savvy and sets up a web-based way of doing this.) Unlike most/all the others, when it's been my turn, I have always suggested books I have read before! Because my DNF rate for others' choices is...less than half, and as much as I don't want a book I love to be hated, the idea of having to force myself to finish a book I don't want to, because I have to guide the discussion, is worse to me.
Now, in theory, I totally agree that "part of book club is to get people to read different books," but I also think that life is too short to read books I don't want to read. There are so many books! It may be that I am not best suited to this book club (or perhaps most book clubs). It's a good group of friends, and there's no pressure to finish a book, but it does kind of defeat the purpose, and I have wondered if I should leave the club. I was in another book club years ago, in hopes of reading books I would not have picked up on my own and liking them, and I didn't like a one of them. I must be too choosy.
Final thought: our next selection is Lessons In Chemistry. I read the first few pages and it didn't appeal to me, which is probably good as the library had 149 holds on the regular version, 89 on the large print, and said I might get the ebook in 17 weeks. I wonder how many people in the group will just buy it?
Okay, I have lots of thoughts, too. Your book selection process sounds very onerous to me. I have to come up with FOUR options?! What if a book comes out of nowhere and everyone is talking about it?
DeleteBut what I really want to talk about is having to lead a discussion. We honestly just let the conversation go naturally with no real leader. We start with a quick "what did you think?" and then the conversation flows. We've never had discussion questions or a discussion leader. Our book club generally starts at 7pm, people trickle in until about 7:30, we have a discussion about the book for 20-30 minutes, everyone eats, and then we spend another hour goofing around before everyone decides they need to go home. I guess if we were more formal about things, we'd spend more time talking about the book, but I usually feel like we have a good discussion without a leader. Being a discussion leader sounds like a lot of pressure to me.
I liked Lessons in Chemistry quite a bit, but it's definitely a book that veers in tone from super serious to super ridiculous, so I can see how it wouldn't fit every reader. I do think it's probably worth your time, but if you can't get it from the library, I can see how you'd skip it!
I'm still mad at whomever picked "The Goldfinch" for our book. (If it had been about 150 pages less, which still would put it over 500) maybe... I'm having a love-hate relationship with my book club and haven't attended well since Covid. I think it's a mix of never talking that much about the book -- which is sometimes OK, but after you've read something you really wish you hadn't bothered with instead of the thing on your shelf that you'd really like to dig into, it's frustrating. And to be honest, that stack at home of books is so big, I'd almost rather go with it. I'm OK with a mix of book lengths -- I don't really care if it's long or short if it was worth my time. It used to be every book had to be in either paperback or at the library, which meant new books were pretty well off the list, as they are more popular and even if at the library, harder to get and read in time. Now it seems like that doesn't matter. I just get frustrated!
ReplyDeleteHa ha! I occasionally poke fun at the person who picked The Luminaries for our book club. It was interminable AND boring. Our current book is more than 500 pages, so I'll be interested to see who actually finishes it. I agree with you - I don't care if a book is long or short as long as it's worth reading!
DeleteIt's been a long while since I have been in a book club. I don't remember how we chose books. It was so long ago I think we took books out of the book section in the newspaper, which meant that the books were very popular and we all generally had to buy them. That's not ideal but I do have copies of some pretty decent books here.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved Women in the Castle, and I thought it was such a fascinating way to look at people getting caught up in a terrible wave. I read it a long while ago - maybe 2018 - but was thinking just recently of revisiting it.
I recently heard of a kind of book club where each meeting people talk about a recent notable book they read, and why they liked it, and I thought that was a very interesting idea. You wouldn't get the great discussion with others about the book, but it is an interesting concept nonetheless.
I've heard of book clubs where everyone reads something different, but that doesn't seem like a thing I'd like. I imagine I'd try to read everyone's book so that I felt like I'd have something to contribute and then it would be too many books and be stressful and the last thing I want is for my reading to be stressful!
DeleteI love being in a book club, but I can't imagine doing it without having our entire library catalog online. It would have been incredibly frustrating pre-Internet!
Agree, by and large. Sometimes we do recommend a book for the list that we have read, but it's the exception, not the rule, and once someone else put on one of my all-time favourites and everyone else didn't like it and it did kind of suck. We meet in June to make the list, and we try to make it balanced in terms of topics and fiction and non (we had to have a moratorium on incest one year because, yikes). We only choose books that are easily available so nothing too new. My book for this year was Cloud Cuckoo Land, lol, and we often do long reads. Also enjoyed your comment about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
ReplyDeleteYes, occasionally someone will have read a book before, but it's rare and if more than one person has read a book, it's very unlikely that we'll read it. We actually don't ever read non-fiction because a lot of people read a lot for their jobs and we wanted this to be more "fun." My husband's book club is on a rotating schedule: non-fiction, contemporary fiction, and classic. I think it just depends on who is in your book club and what their priorities are.
DeleteI don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't enjoy ATGIB for one reason or another!
I feel like 150-300 is too short and as mentioned by Jenny would really limit you as most books are over 300 pages! I don't know what kind of books this blogger is reading! However, the last thing I want is to have a too-long book for bookclub because then you feel like you have to get through it and it becomes a chore! I actually started Cloud Cuckoo and could not get into it and so luckily I am glad that was not a bookclub book for me because I abandoned it! If I want to go back and try again, I will, but I would hate to be forced to read a long book that I just was not into. I think a 300-500 page limit makes more sense.
ReplyDeleteThe last bookclub I was in was at work and one person would choose a list and then everyone else would vote. However, I felt like these guys were just trying to impress each other as they kept picking super dry and super long non-fiction books. We read Dark Money and I STRUGGLED to get through it in time for the discussion each week (we broke it down into sections). It was not really very enjoyable.
My work would basically say we're having a book club on Book X and have us sign up for it and provide a copy of the book. I don't know who was choosing those books, but I liked that the decision-making was out of our hands. Otherwise, I could see it being very similar to your work situation where everyone was trying to one up each other.
DeleteOh, I thought Cloud Cuckoo Land was genius. It did take a while to see how all the storylines fit together, but once they did, it was pretty good. I can see how the first bit might be a slog, though.
I'm in agreement with you on these points! We have a very regimented but democratic process for picking books. In December, each member suggested 3 books - they give a synopsis of each book at our last meeting of the year and then we vote. We don't have rules around what you can suggest, though. If you want to suggest something very long or something you've already read, so be it. We haven't read many long books, though. It's a big commitment for the average reader to read something that is like 600+ pages... so people seem to generally stick w/ books in the 300-500 range. Anyways, once the books have been voted on, I set the cadence of books based on library availability as most of us live in the same county and most do not want to buy the book. So we can still read some buzzy, new books, but they are read in the second half of the year to give people time to get them from the library. It's kind of an ideal set up IMO as everyone has a vested interest in what we read since we vote.
ReplyDeleteI am learning that a lot of book clubs have much more regimented ways of choosing books than our book club! At the end of our meeting, we just toss out ideas for books until we settle on one. We don't have a rotation or a formal way of deciding. I wonder which way is better?
DeleteYour library must not have super long hold lists! Our library system has ridiculously long hold lists. It's not unusual for a 1k+ people to be on a wait list for a book! The library will purchase more books if the wait is really long but I often have to wait 3+ months for a new/buzzy book! Our library system is county-based and my county (Hennepin) is massive and I've read that our library systems are incredibly well-utilized. Which is good overall but not great if you want to use the library for book club and don't have enough advanced warning!
DeleteOur town is really small, so if 1k+ people had a hold on a book, that would be 1/12 of our population! A long line at our branch is over 100. I was around 120 when I first requested this one and never got it in the seven weeks. I used to use the main branch in downtown Minneapolis to get a lot of books and I'd say that the hold times here and the hold times there are roughly equivalent - just a lot fewer people and fewer copies of the books floating around here.
DeleteMy experience w/ holds is probably skewed because I almost exclusively read ebooks and ebooks often have a longer wait than the physical book. 3 of our book club books have 18-24 week waits for the ebook! After your review, I requested Georgie All the Way and the wait for the ebook is 18 weeks, but the wait for the physical book is long, too. But it's a new release so that's not too surprising. We used to pick our books closer to when we read them, but that meant we had to read backlist only so people could get them at the library.
DeleteOh, our ebooks wait lists are months and months. I have a book with a twenty-six week waitlist and two with eighteen weeks. Since I only get 10 ebook holds, but I've never come against a limit for physical books (I'm sure one exists - I just haven't hit it), I tend to read more physical books because I couldn't possibly get enough ebook loans to keep up with my reading habit. I was surprised that "Georgie, All Along" didn't have a waitlist when I ordered it. I don't think contemporary romances are popular in our area.
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ReplyDeleteOk now I really want to join your book club because you TALK ABOUT THE BOOKS!! My club votes in August for the slate of books we'll read over the next year. This year, the titles are just not doing it for me. Even though we have really good conversation (the woman who coordinates is a librarian very On Her Game), i is super hard for me to get motivated to go to book club when the books are just so very meh.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I don't want to get you too excited about it. We probably spend 20-30 minutes talking about the book and the rest of the time chatting about our lives. It's a social book club, after all. We have been hit or miss on books, but there's usually a good discussion, even when the book is meh.
DeleteI think the last three are great ideas, especially accessibility. The idea that someone should have read it seems lame to me... we had someone try to do this at our short-lived work book club because the wanted to see what people thought of the ending... but said the book was mostly bad. No thanks! Also, I don't want to reread a book? LOL.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many books. I will reread a book, but I don't necessarily WANT to, you know?
DeleteOh, I just love this topic and finding out the way people do book clubs. We're all so different! The way we've suggested books has changed dramatically over the 10 years I've been in my book club. For some years, we just threw out random suggestions at the end of the meeting for next month's books. But then we discovered only a few people were actually suggesting and wanted it to be a bit more democratic. This year, since we have 6 members, each member was assigned two months (their birthday month + one other month) and in those months, you have to bring the book suggestions (2-4) and then we pick from what the person suggested. We try to only suggest books that are available at the library without a long wait and around the 300-400 page mark. It's nice to read a book that's less than 300 pages, but that's very rare to find these days! Anything over 400, though, gets immediately nixed by other book club members usually, lol. I try to remember that not everyone makes the same time for reading that I do, and a 450-page book may seem overwhelming!
ReplyDeleteWe generally do not suggest books we've already read. Though I will sometimes suggest a book I've read if I really, really loved it, think it will make for a good discussion, and want my friends to read it, haha. But I won't reread the book if we end up reading a book I've already read. That's when I'm glad I write reviews on my blog so I remember what I thought of the book - ha.
I could talk about book clubs ALL DAY LONG, ahhh.
I could talk about it all day long, too. I have so many thoughts. Our book does do the thing where we just pick a book for the next meeting at the end of the current meeting. Basically, this means that you have to be attending to have a say in what we read. We used to do a poll online, but we found that people who are in our FB group who don't regularly attend would vote and they were always choosing books we didn't like. Ha! So now if you come to book club, your suggestions get more weight. This month I lobbied for Code Name Helene on your suggestion!
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