Book Group Selecting

I know it seems far away but 2013 is slowly creeping up on me, especially when it comes to the book group.

For those who aren't familiar, I took over my library book group back in February. Since then a new head of Adult has created two additional groups, but I was able to keep mine. The previous moderator only held the group 9 months out of the year (Sept to May), so that was the first thing I changed. Back in March we voted for books for June to Dec. 2012. Let me say, I loved this. I took to Twitter and posted the polling results as the members voted via surveymonkey. Very exciting! 

  

How the selecting process works is that I compile a list of books from tons of research. I also allow members to nominate books.  We read mostly fiction, but I do like to have at least 3 nonfiction scattered in there. There I weed out books on my list and their suggests that don't work (ie, too many pages, repeat author, previously read books, etc.) then I post the selections online and let them pick a certain number. From the results, I decided on the final list. 

I have already started taking selections, but I wanted to post the list that I compiled. Here it is so far....

Fiction:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Spring Fever by Mary Kay Andrew

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

Causal Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Thirteen Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Maisie Dobbs  by Jacqueline Winspear

Nonfiction:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote                                                                                                             

The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma                                         

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roa                                                                

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus  by Bill Wasik  and Monica Murphy

I want to do a Teen book every year and our current 2012 YA book is Hunger Games. I am secretly pulling for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for 2013, though maybe someone will suggest Catching Fire. I know that there is one book from this list that will be removed because I double checked the page number and it went over the usual and preferred 300 to 400 page limit. 

I will post another list soon with the new picks from the group. 

Book Group Selections

As I stated a few posts ago, I was given the opportunity to run the book group at my library. I don't know how long I will get to keep it because they are currently interviewing for a new head of Adult Services (who is technically suppose to run the group), but I am making sure to make my mark!

One of the first pieces of business I took care of was to make the book group year around. It had previously run from Sept to May, since the Adult Department was too busy in the Summer for the group. So since this has been changed we have to vote on books for the summer. We ended up changing out April pick to feature a local author, which I am very excited about. We took our old April pick, One Summer by David Baldacci, and moved it to June. Now we just had to fill the July through December spots. I don't know how most library book groups work, but in ours we let the members suggest titles then there is a vote (sometimes through e-mail or at an actual meeting). How I chose to set it up:

1. Took suggestions for titles - We set a 300 to 400 page limit on the books. Nothing over. As I said in the e-mail, we all loved Cutting for Stone, but we probably could all agree that 600 page was a little too much. I also stated that an author could only have one selection. Currently Jeannette Walls has two books on our current pick list (Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses) . This hasn't set too well with a few people in the group, especially since they think we are reading too many dysfunctional family books (and they are right).

2. Annotated List - I email the members out a list with the titles but with a two sentence description via WorldCat. It was time consuming for me, but it saved them from having to look up twenty different titles.

3. Voting. I created an online survey via SurveyMonkey so they could vote. I also told them that they could just reply to my email with their choices.

4. Time. I gave them from Wednesday to Sunday to vote. On Monday I will analyze the results. We are meeting on Tuesday to discuss Crooked Letter Crooked Letter and I will hand out the results on some sort of promotional flyer.

Here are the books they suggested (I suggested a few as well, like The Hunger Games)

Fiction

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

Anthill: A Novel by E. O. Wilson

Come in and Cover Me by Gin Phillips (Local Author)

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress

How it all began : a novel by Penelope Lively.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

A Time to Kill by John Grisham

Treason at Lisson Grove by Anne Perry

Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Nonfiction

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur