Comments on: Book Club Run Down

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:17:16 +0000

Greetings,

I was surfing today and stumbled upon your posting regarding book clubs. I'm one of the founding partners of Booksprouts.com

We are an online book club site that is free to join, and allows members to create a club, invite friends, create meetings, and to choose and read books together online. The service is still fairly new, and we are interest in getting feedback on it, as well as getting the word out to people that may be interested in the service. We welcome you to trying out the service free of charge, and welcome to you blog or write about it - good or bad - we appreciate all feedback that helps us improve the service for our members.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoy Booksprouts.com!

Please contact me directly with any questions or assistance.

Regards,

Jason Pfeifer
Community Manager
Booksprouts.com
jason@booksprouts.com

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:17:16 +0000

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:17:16 +0000

By: Humans: Making Happy Happen | Kim Werker

Humans: Making Happy Happen | Kim Werker — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:30:00 +0000

[...] mentioned yesterday that I entered 2008 with a very explicit goal to strike better balance between work and play and [...]

By: Harmony Trowbridge

Harmony Trowbridge — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:45:25 +0000

hey!
i was in that book club!
i'd love to know what the books are and take part! :)

By: April-Lyn

April-Lyn — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:16:51 +0000

I don't belong to a book club, but do something in a similar vein - a friend and I have been meeting for breakfast and reading books aloud one morning a weekend for at least three years now. We alternate reading for a chapter or so each, and for the last year or so we've taken to knitting while the other is reading. We read a lot of sci-fi and young-adult fantasy, as it lends well to being read aloud, but we've also read things like The Metamophosis, The Plague, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Heart of Darkness, and a little bit of Lovecraft. (If you're really interested, I've been trying to keep a log of all the books we read over on my Goodreads page in the "aloud" category: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/galatea)

We've talked about trying to start a bi-weekly read-aloud for adults, but the idea's been shelved until we can find some matching free time that we're willing to sacrifice to the cause. One day, though.

By: kpwerker

kpwerker — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:44:54 +0000

We've just started picking a book in advance, too, so people can have
a head start if they want it. (This was suggested by a mom in our
group.)

I've been really impressed that we've remained focused on the books. I
think the pot luck helps -- we can catch up before we begin the formal
discussion. The discussion usually lasts well over an hour, too. It's
pretty excellent.

On 7-Oct-08, at 6:50 PM, "Disqus"

By: Ann Kingman

Ann Kingman — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:49:18 +0000

I am a serial bookclub joiner. One thing I've discovered is that for me, bookclubs made up of groups of friends don't work. Maybe it's because we're all at the stage where we have young chldren, but inevitably, the meetings ended up with 10 mins. of book discussion and 1 hr. of personal stuff. And when people didn't read the book, they still came because it was social — which was OK, except that then there was almost no discussion of the book and more and more started forgetting about the book and making it only social.

You seem very organized and on top of everything, which is fantastic. My current book group has a leader like that. One thing we do differently is that we choose the book 2 months in advance, so that people can schedule accordingly. This also allows more time for people who need to get the book out of the library.

By: kpwerker

kpwerker — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:45:12 +0000

It's certainly nice that our book club is pretty much made up of friends who
go way back. I've enjoyed how our differences are highlighted when we
discuss a book. But on the other hand, and despite those differences, in
general we all have a fairly similar set of values, so we miss out in not
having wildly divergent perspectives represented.

By: spinstah

spinstah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:37:07 +0000

A new coworker started one up with some of her friends a few weeks ago, and we recently had the first meeting. I'd never done a book club before and I have to say I enjoyed it. I think it would be even better if I had more in common with the other women (they're mostly Moms, and there were kids around – neither of which is a bad thing, but it makes me wonder if I will be able to connect with them very much outside of book club, since they are in this whole other sphere than I am). But anyway, I liked being able to dredge up my old English major self and make random points.