The Calgary Public Library recommends titles in a list called “ Book Club Essentials .” The Regina Public Library offers “ Book Club in a Bag ,” including multiple copies of one title , an author biography , and discussion questions .
Your reading choices can be anything ! Classics , mysteries , science fiction , science nonfiction , history , spirituality , Indigenous authors , sports biographies , philosophy , math , self-help , new authors , or fantasy romance . Expand your horizons by reading about topics like refugee experiences or artificial intelligence . Choose authors from different countries , then discuss the book while eating their country ' s cuisine at a restaurant . Specify books that have fewer than 200 pages . Or even veer away from books and discuss a magazine article , podcast episode , or movie — maybe all of the above . In some book clubs , members don ’ t read the same book ; instead , they each read a book of their own choosing and then discuss them all at the meeting . In a Silent Book Club , members bring their own book to a designated location and read silently together . ( Their website says , “ Welcome to introvert happy hour !”)
You can meet every month . You can meet three times a year . You can also change it up from meeting to meeting . In one book club that I used to belong to , each of us would find and read aloud a poem in December because we had small children and were too busy to read a whole book .
Some of my friends listen to audiobooks . One friend reads the paper book and listens along at the same time and — get this ! — adjusts the speed of the audiobook to align with her own reading tempo !
I ’ ve belonged to book clubs for close to forty years . It ’ s a great way to meet new people or get together with friends I want to see more often and an excellent way to expand my reading repertoire . My mind has been opened to books I hadn ’ t heard of or might never have chosen , all because they were on my book club list . A few titles have been stinkers . Can I come clean ? I bailed on page 70 of Anna Karenina because I found it boring . ( Sorry , Leo .)
As we used to discuss in my classroom , I connect the text to myself , to other texts , and to the world at large . And at my next book club meeting , I discover how the book resonated ( or didn ’ t ) with other readers . So many ways to connect !
After university , long ago , Sheila Bean ran out of steam for reading , but then a book club helped her to get back into the swing of things . She recently finished reading ( and recommends ) Tell the Wolves I ' m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt . Sheila retired from the Calgary Board of Education in 2019 and still misses reading novels to her students .
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