ARRT Book Discussion Report: The Book of Unknown Americans [Featuring the Author!]

As I mentioned here back in June, the hardest part of leaving my library job was leaving the book group. But as I also said in that post, the end of my time with the BPL group was not going to be the end of me leading book clubs, and it would especially not be the end of me blogging about specific book groups.

Today is the start of a new kind of book discussion report here on RA for All and it comes with its own website.  [Yes that means I am now up to being the webmaster of 4 sites].

Introducing the ARRT Literary Book Discussion and Leadership Training site. From that page:

The Adult Reading Round Table, a group dedicated to developing reader's advisory skills and promoting reading for pleasure through public libraries in the Chicago area, provides all members access to our quarterly [4x a year] literary book discussion and leadership training. 

We give library book discussion leaders the chance to sit back and enjoy being discussion participants while also offering a forum for sharing questions and practical solutions to the problems and concerns of book group leaders. This “nuts and bolts” training session is offered at the end of each discussion. 

Both the traditional book discussion and the leadership training session will be moderated by a member of the ARRT Steering Committee. Dates, times, locations, and titles will be assigned approximately 10 weeks in advance. Members will be notified by email. If you are a member and wish to attend the discussion, you must register in advance [details in the email] and secure your own copy of the book. 

With a rotating cast of leaders, titles, and locations, we hope our members can find a discussion that fits their schedule.

Now, while coming to the actual discussion requires membership, we are offering the website, including the notes of our discussions for everyone through the site-- for free.

And our most recent discussion of The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez contains something extra special.


The topic for the leadership training portion of the discussion was about how to involve authors in your book discussions, and Ms. Henriquez herself joined us for that part of the discussion.

So head over to the ARRT site where you will find a link to the notes of the book discussion and a separate link to the leadership training portion of the discussion with Ms. Henriquez.

The notes are in a manner similar to the way I did them for the BPL group. It simply requires a click or two to get at them now.

***If you are finding this post more than a few months after its initial publication [July 2015], please use this link to access our archive.