Making book club selections – a different perspective #MondayBlogs #AmReading #Books
Full disclosure. I haven’t even cracked the cover on The Orphan Master’s Son, the next Pulitzer Prize winner on my list to read. I could use a little break from the Pulitzer Prize winners after finally (Finally!) finishing The Goldfinch. I’m also busy trying to finish a book for book club. (Great excuse, right?) As I was reading The Italian Teacher yesterday – a book I would never have chosen for book club – it occurred to me that making book club selections is not always an easy task. So, how do you pick a book for book club?
Cost. A lot of advice surrounding picking book club books centers on the books, but price is important as well. If you’re in a club that meets once a month, you can’t expect people to spend $15 a month on a book. It’s just not reasonable. Personally, I hardly ever spend that much on a book. And living overseas, the library isn’t always an option. If it is, then there is only one copy of the book club book available and that’s hardly fair. In past book clubs, we’ve agreed to only read books that were already out in paperback. Obviously, that was in the dark ages. Now, with ebooks immediately available, we don’t need to wait to read recent releases. Still, I think it’s important to find novels that are under $10 (preferably less!).
Almost Prize winners. If you’re stuck on choosing a book, the long and short lists of the big literary prizes (Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, etc.), is a good place to look. If your group is large, there is a good chance that at least one member has already read the prize winner. So, looking at the long and short lists is great alternate.
Not literature. Sometimes book clubs get caught up in only reading novels that can be classed as literature. There’s no reason for that. The most important element in choosing a novel is that the story is one that lends itself to discussion. There are a ton of books that qualify even if they aren’t prize-winning-literature-tomes. I tend to pick these lighter reads for meetings around the holidays when everyone is too busy to read (something I have a hard time understanding. Too busy to read???).
Member selections. In one book club I joined, each member got a chance to pick a book. They then hosted the next book club meeting and lead the discussion. This was interesting as we had an array of members from around the world. I ended up reading quite a few selections I would never have picked (probably because I’d never even heard of the authors!). If your book club isn’t full of expats from different countries, you can select a country and find a popular book written by an author from that country. You can go all out at the meeting with food and drink selections from that country as well. (I once chose a Russian novel. Somehow a bottle of vodka disappeared during that meeting. I was not a happy camper at work the next day.)
How does your book club pick books? I’d love to hear some fun ideas.