Books, Readers and Beyond: #54 Social Networking Through Books

I am currently a member of the Afternoon Book Club at the Maud Marks Library. We read a little of everything. This month we read The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. On April 9 we will be discussing The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. I am a lowtech person (despite my job and how much I actually use technology) and therefore like to do things the old fashioned way. An in-person book club is the best for me.

Our library already has 2 book clubs. My boss is a member of our Evening Book Club and I am a member of the Afternoon Book Club. We have discussed starting a Mystery Book Club which we would take turns moderating but the current book clubs keep us pretty busy. There is one website that we use for book suggestions and discussion questions that is not on the list and is rather surprising to me. At the Maud Marks Library, we use a site called LitLovers. They provide summaries and discussion questions for hundreds of books. For our Mystery Book Club we could start with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith . The big thing with a book club is making sure everyone has their say. My book club starts with a thumbs up/down approach so everyone is able to give an opinion of a book.

I just signed myself on to Visual Bookshelf on Facebook. It was interesting to see some of the books that it generated for me. Some of the suggestions were either ones I had read or ones that I wanted to read anyway. I have rather eclectic reading tastes. I like the classics but I generally will read anything I can get my hands on and rarely do I find a book I don't like. I was surprised that Visual Bookshelf was able to read me so well. I was able to use it for nearly an hour before it went ballistic on me. (I think I was too excited when adding titles!) It stopped working before I could look up One for the Money by Janet Evanovich but people (including me) really seemed to love the Stephanie Plum series. On Shelfari it seems people either loved or hated the book. It is probably the same for the entire series.