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

Exercise 1:

I used to lead a book club at my branch. The Reading Group Guides website was really helpful for me when I was still leading the club. I would definitely prefer an "in-person" bookclub to an online bookclub. However, it might be interesting to try to run a bookclub on Facebook.


Exercise 2:

Using the Reading Group Choices website I found a non-fiction book called A Journal for Jordan. If I were to start another book club at the library I think this would be a good choice. Right now, starting a book club at my branch isn't feasible because my branch is closed. For a good while, I tried to keep the club going by meeting at the community house in Seabrook, but the group members found it too difficult to get copies of the books. There's no reason, however, that I couldn't start a club among my friends. This would allow me to choose riskier books to discuss. I like the idea of a rotating presenter and of meeting at a local restaurant.


Exercise 3:

I looked up Stardust by Neil Gaiman on Goodreads and on Shelfari. The rating on Goodreads was 3.91 out of a possible five with over 20,000 ratings. Shelfari didn't have a cumulative rating but almost 10,000 had read it and 454 people had written reviews. I read a few of the reviews. Nothing really surprising turned up. Readers reacted to the book in various ways, some loved it, some hated it and some were in between.