Book Club Reading Lists

Video Transcript

"I'm Jeanna Rock and we're discussing book club reading lists. Why is it important to even address looking at other lists? One of the reasons is because it opens up suggestions for books that you may not have thought about. A lot of people do a lot of reading and so there are some books that are highly recommended that you may not have been aware of. There are books published about good books for discussion lists. I know when I started my book group out, I bought the book, I think it was called The Reading Group, which actually gave you lots of suggestions on books. They explained what the book was about and why it was a good one for book discussion. Remember not all popular novels are going to be good for discussion. You need ones that you can actually discuss, argue and fight over sometimes. So, places that you can find these lists, as I mentioned are, some books are published particularly for that reason. And also magazines like Time Magazine will list some of the best literature for the year as well. And they'll have critic's choice and they'll also have viewer's choice as well. So you don't always have to go with the critics, you can sometimes pick books that other readers really suggest. Also you might look at lists like the Nobel prize winners or the Pulitzers prize winners or several other, the Booker T prize winner is also a good one; where you're going to get some really quality literature which will be interesting for discussing. I would also ask around. Find out and get lists from other book groups. They're always a great source of information because they've gone through the trial by fire."