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9 October 2010

Why you should join a book group

Tomorrow is my face to face book group. We meet once a month at a local coffee shop, and just at the moment we are meeting at the one attached to a Mary Martin's bookshop.
(If you are in Adelaide, female, read crime fiction, and looking for a book group to join, contact me by email, and I'll give you details).

In one form or another, with considerable variation of membership, we have been meeting for 20 years. Just recently we went to see the preview of The Girl Who Played with Fire after I won tickets to take them to it.

Generally we choose a book to read - we have a roster - and then we discuss it next time we meet. Our discussions aren't terribly in depth, we generally either like it or we don't, we bring books to hand on to others, and we give tips about good things we've read recently.

Tomorrow we are each going to talk about something we've read recently and I'm going to talk about BLACKLANDS by Belinda Bauer, and A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE by Malla Nunn and hand on my copy of  SILK CHASER by Peter Klein.

However there is another sort of book group you can join if you want to discuss books, an online one.
Here are some Yahoo ones that I belong to: 
What do you get out of being in a book group?
  • a venue for testing your ideas out
  • a chance to discuss books with people
  • multitudes of suggestions about what to read/buy next
  • companionship on your reading journey
If you want to keep up with crime fiction news, you could also put Crime and mystery fiction on FriendFeed on your list of places to visit.

3 comments:

  1. Kerrie - Thanks for sharing your book club experiences. Book clubs really can be great oases for talking about reading and authors. You've got some great reasons here, too, to join one. I hope you have a great meeting tomorrow.

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  2. It is fun to discuss books with other people - whether face to face or online. I like being forced to think about things from other people's points of view to see what I might have missed.

    I must admit though I have stopped going to my non-crime book club. So many of the books were things I just didn't enjoy (lots of worthy literature and Maya Angelou poetry and that sort of thing).

    I had an email this week from an Australian writer who found my review of his book on my blog and the email made me sad for how tough it must be for Australian writers so I'm going to discuss Aussie books tomorrow - I have one I am determined to finish today and one I read a couple of months ago. I can bring along my copy of the Malla Nunn books to share too (I have the second one as well)

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  3. I've just joined a book group and been to one meeting. It's taken me nearly a year to find one near me (now I've moved), partly because they don't meet in the summer.Is that the same with your club? Anyway I loved the meeting, and talking about what books we'd read recently it seems the others are like-minded people who like the same type of books as me.

    I used to belong to one where we lived before, but found it met too frequently (once a fortnight) and it was difficult to fit in reading the chosen book along with other books I was reading. This new group meets once a month, much better. They're a sociable lot too - we had wine and nibbles!

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