Book Discussion Info for Book Club Leaders

I have a few odds and ends pertaining to book discussions that have been piling up, so I thought today was a good day to gather them into a post.

I am going to start with news pertaining to the 2017 ARRT Literary Book Discussion and Leadership Training program mostly because I have received a few questions about it in the last few days.

First the news I am the happiest about. After soliciting suggestions, ARRT has officially voted to change the mouthful of a name we had for this wonderful, vibrant, and useful program to...ARRT Book Club Study. All I can say is, thank goodness. Do you know how many times I have had to say and or type that long name as the Coordinator? Yikes.

But seriously, thank you to everyone who submitted suggestions via Facebook and Twitter to us. We had a number of excellent names suggested, and last week we voted for the winner as mentioned above-- Book Club Study. This made the most sense as our two members-only branded events that we run all year long are the Genre Study and the Book Discussion Leadership program.  Making the names more symmetrical makes sense from a branding standpoint.  Also, we realized that the program we have created for book discussion leaders is very comparable to what we do for our work with the genres. Now we will be getting new logos for each set of programs too.

I am proud to have led the charge on the evolution of this wonderful 4x a year program and am excited for the year to come.

Speaking of the year to come, I have updated the website with as much information as I have, but there is still no set date or time for the first discussion.  Here is what I have posted:

Click here for the full page

As the coordinator, I now know who is leading each discussion, in which quarter, and a few of the titles.  We are just working on scheduling dates right now.

I will have the entire 2017 schedule up before the end of the year, but as a teaser I know in April we will be discussing The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon and it will not be held at a public library [the host will offer tours of her library with this program] AND in the summer we will be doing a nonfiction title. So I can guarantee we are going to have some great experiences planned for all book discussion leaders, not to mention the camaraderie and support we all provide each other at these meetings.

Please do not forget, if you are not a member of ARRT, you can still follow along with all of the notes from these meetings by signing up for our newsletter or checking the Book Club Study site [Oh, my fingers were so happy to not type the old name].

Now onto other book club information that is not ARRT centered.

October was National Reading Group Month. I can never give it the time it deserves because of my 31 Days of Horror blog-a-thon; however, the resources this celebration creates are a great resource all year long, specifically, the Great Groups Reads list for this year and all past years. This one of my favorite resources for identifying dynamic book discussion titles. Click here for the current list and scroll to the bottom for links to the lists going back to 2009! Pick a year and print the list for your group to choose from-- they are all chosen by experts and annotated for you. And new or old, a good book discussion book is a good book discussion book no matter when you discuss it.

Finally, over on Booklist Reader, they had two posts [here and here] about the pleasures of reading plays with many modern choices. If your group is in a bit of a rut, I suggest you try a play. These are proven winners AND just the discussion you can have about reading a play versus watching it performed alone will make for a great discussion.