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