… and no eReader or computer!
So you have to read the same books over and over. What 3 could entertain you for 4 months?
3 for Thursday: 3 Books You’d Want to Have if You Were Stranded in a Mountain Cabin for 4 Months
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Category Archives: Book Club
The 2011 Book Club List
Whoo-hoo! Our 2011 book club list is done!
Here’s what’s in store this year:
January: The Glass Castle, Jeanette Wells
February: One Day, David Nicholls
March: The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo
April: Cleopatra, Stacey Schiff
June: Wolfe Hall, Hilary Mantel
July: Room, Emma Donoghue
August: Little Bee, Chris Cleave
September: Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, Day, Elie Wiesel
October: Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn
November: The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain
December: Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
January 2012: The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Have you read any of these? Tell me what I’m in store for. …
Here’s our 2010 book club list.
Here’s our 2009 book club list.
Here’s how we come up with our book club list each year.
How We Choose Our Book Club List
Our book club has been going on for 10 years. It’s a great group of women from all different walks of life, and we love coming together to read great books — from the bestseller lists, Pulitzer winners, Booker awards, or classics from our past that we’ve always wanted to reread.
A lot of people ask me, however, how we select our books. It seems that all book clubs do it a different way, and there’s certainly no right or wrong way.
But here’s what we do:
Every December, we have our “core members” (loosely defined as those who come all the time, and the number ranges from 9 to 11) each select one book, with a second or third as “backup.”
We enter our selections as “replies” on an e-vite list, which we found works best because the file stays “live” for up to a month, and this way everyone can read everyone else’s choices without constant, interruptive e-mails. Members can also “second” someone else’s choice on the e-vite, which gives the book more “weight” in the selection process. Continue reading
What Was Your Favorite Book of 2010?
Well, another year of reading, but this year I didn’t read nearly as much as I usually do. In fact, I think this is a record low. I was pretty busy working on my own books, I guess, in the evening hours (when I’d normally read fiction). Instead of curling up on the couch to read, I was sitting in my desk chair in the den, writing or rewriting dialogue and settings. But it was still fun. (Writing fiction is as much fun as reading it, truly. You never know what your characters are going to do next.)
Also, as I look over my list of books I read this year, I apparently needed to learn a lot. I read six nonfiction books – on writing, agents, the Wild West (research for my short story) and on paying for college! (Yep, need that one.) But I did manage to get a handful of fiction in, many of which were comfort re-reads.
Here’s what was on my complete list, in order from January through December (favorites at the bottom):
- Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents (2009 Edition) — Huge. Intimidating. Took me a couple of months, but I finally looked through the entire thing with my little sticky notes and made a long list of possible agents. Then I gave them letter grades for how much they appealed to me (“C” through “A+”), and sorted the list in Excel. Whew! Now on to the next step in the agent search. … Continue reading
Latest Reading List: Do You Notice a Theme, Here?
Updating my “Currently Reading” section with some books that are all on my nightstand right now. You might notice a theme, here:
- The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in the Wild West (1840 -1900), by Candy Moulton — Great reference for everything from that era, from professions and food storage, to clothing and furniture. It’s a tad dry (definitely a reference book!), but still so packed with info that I’m enjoying it anyway. Just reading about how refrigeration came into being, for instance, or how after 1865 condensed milk was available in cans. … (Really? huh. …)
- Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West, by Anne Seagraves — Another interesting reference book that covers madams, the various levels of “houses,” how much money prostitutes made, some of the rough towns like Dodge and Bodie, and even some famous “wild” women like Calamity Jane and Josephine Marcus (Wyatt Earp’s eventual wife). Great characters. …
- Men to Match My Mountains, by Irving Stone — I’ve only been meaning to read this book for about 10 years! Honestly. Now it seems like a good time, while I’m looking for inspiration for wild-west characters and planning a summer trip to the Sierra Nevadas (where much of this historical novel takes place). My mom and my husband have each read this book about two or three times, and tell me it’s one of their all-time favorites (and then they throw in a plaintive wail: WHY oh WHY haven’t I read it yet! They insist I will absolutely adore it.) So here I go, Mom and Chris. …
Do you read books for reference? What is on your nightstand right now?
