As Debra Linn notes in today's post, several authors have contributed pieces to the ReadingGroupGuides.com blog talking about how meeting with book clubs has offered them insight into their own prose. This exchange of ideas, she explains, is a two-way street --- an author visit can be just as beneficial for book clubbers as it is for the scribe who wrote the book being discussed.


At Books & Books, we often invite authors to join our ready-made book club luncheons and evenings. We do this knowing how much our book clubbers get from discussing these books with their authors. We never imagined how much the authors would get from it.

People join book clubs to create the common experience of reading, to take a by-definition solitary pursuit and make it social, to see if the universal themes are indeed universal.

And the author gets to do the same thing.

And more.

It's writers' therapy or maybe the modern-day version of running the gauntlet. Armed with nothing but a 300-page book and an MFA degree, the author must traverse quizzing and questioning and soon-to-wilt salads from 12 women --- and the clock is ticking.

But entry after entry in the Reading Group Guides blog gushes about the insightful and inspiring sessions authors have had with book clubs. From Debra Dean to Garth Stein, from Kristy Kiernan to Lisa See, each writer discusses how his writing has improved, how his own understanding of his writing has improved from these meetings.

Readers can usually tell when a writer has shortchanged a character, when he has trapped himself into a literary corner, when he has taken the easy way out. And in the direct glare of empty wine glasses and eager readers, there is nowhere the author can hide. It takes a brave author to meet his readers in person. And it takes a brave reader.

Seeing the author face to face --- or phone to phone, or Webcam to Webcam --- forces book clubbers to think critically about the book. Not just criticism but critique. Why did I enjoy this passage? How did I get to know these characters? Was it all through dialogue? Was there a turn of phrase that stuck in my head? Did a character's decision ring true to the personality the author developed? Was the book too long? Too short?

And when the author is in the house, fellow book clubbers never let you get away with just saying, "I didn't like this book."

Maybe this is the 21st century version of hands-on editing in a publishing world with diminishing resources. And it skips a few marketing steps, too, because there's no guessing what readers will like. They're telling authors right to their faces.

As a long ago literary criticism class taught me, literature has a life of its own once it has been written. But it doesn't just have a life of its own. It has everyone's life. Each and every reader.

In the backroom of our Books & Books Bal Harbour Shops, we have a tattered photocopy of a cartoon that captures this perfectly. The drawing appears to be of a typical book-signing line at an author event --- people lined up, clutching books, and one person sitting behind a table. But the sign next to the table says, "Meet the Reader," and the first person is line says, "I love the way you read my first book." It's role reversal, but it puts the emphasis right where so many writers have it.

So, help an author today: Invite one to your book club. You can reach most of them through their own websites. If the meeting is in-person remember that if you feed them, they will come. If the meeting is by phone, the conversation may provide all the nourishment they need.

---Debra Linn

Labels: Book Clubs, Books and Books, Debra Linn

One of the questions that we are asked most often is, "How does a group decide what to read?" This post from Jennifer Hart, who writes the bookclubgirl.com blog, talks about how her group does this and how they enlist the help of their local independent bookseller in their selection process.

Many people ask me how my book group decides on the books that we read each month. While I had nothing to do with how our group is set up to choose titles, as I joined a few months after it was formed, I have to say that I think we have a system that works pretty well, with a minimum of hurt feelings. In groups I've been in in the past, there was a general free-for-all at each meeting, with every member putting forth titles for us to vote on. Inevitably someone felt that their titles weren't paid attention to.

Here's how we do it in my current group. Whoever's turn it is to host that month puts forth 5 books. If they're not books they have on hand, our local independent, Goldfinch Books, is great about lending out copies for the night. They also give us a discount on the bulk purchase of books and call each and every member when the books come in. If you're not hooked up with a local store to get the books for your group, I highly recommend it. And the staff, of course, can be a great resource in pointing you towards good choices. Find a store near you via the Book Sense website.

So we have our five books. The host presents each one, and we pass them around. If anyone has read one or another book by that author we share those thoughts and impressions. We then hold two rounds of voting. In the first round, you can vote for two books (I guess this is like the presidential primaries --- not in the two votes sense, but in the preliminary sense). In the second round, or general election if you will, only the top two vote getters from the first round are up for election. During this round each member gets one vote and the winner here is the next book group pick.

This system works really well. I like not having to narrow down my choice to one initially, and the discussion we have between rounds helps us to hone in on which books are not only the most appealing but the ones we feel are the most discussable -- which is, of course, the ultimate goal. A newly initiated rule is that we will bring the runner up back to the subsequent meeting as one of the next five candidates. In addition, if we've voted on a book twice and not chosen it, we don't usually allow it into the running again. Though I'm pretty sure we broke this rule with Eat, Pray, Love, which took a few months to get chosen.

My book group met tonight, and our choices were Jodi Picoult's Plain Truth, Katrina Kittle's The Kindness of Strangers, Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, Geraldine Brooks' March (we previously read and loved Year of Wonders) and Debbie Galant's Fear and Yoga in New Jersey.

The top two picks from the first round were The Kindness of Strangers and The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver won out, I think mostly due to our anticipation of discussing the book's enticing premise --- how one woman's life will change, or not, based on whether or not she kisses a man who is not her husband. I'm very much looking forward to next month's discussion of this book!

------Jennifer Hart , bookclubgirl.com

Labels: Book Clubs, Book Sense, Books, Jodi Picoult, Reading Group Guides, Reading Groups