Keeping your bookclub happy with Nancy Pearl

Along with Allison (one of the three founding members of our bookclub, the Bluestockings, which we founded in December 1999) I attended the Teton County Library's Bookclub event with Booklust author Nancy Pearl.

She shared some tips for running a successful bookclub, including the following DON'Ts:

1. Select a story-driven book
   
2. Opt to have meetings without a leader
   
3. Go around the circle and ask for each person to speak in order
   
4. Begin with the question, "Well...what did everyone think of the book?"

Instead, DO:

1. Select a character-driven story (i.e. books in which the main character has to make a choice, books that have ambiguous endings)
   
2. Have a discussion leader at each meeting (she recommends rotating this position) who helps move the discussion along, and makes sure that no one person dominates the discussion, and encourages folks who have not said anything to speak up (i.e. look for body language that says "I have something to say" -- leaning forward, mouth possibly open, even if no words are yet coming out). The discussion leader can say to the quiet person, "It looks like you have something to add to the conversation..."
   
3. A true discussion should be a give and take, which does not necessarily happen in an orderly fashion!
   
4. A better way to start a meeting is with the question, "Why do you think the author chose to do X instead of Y?" or "What's the significance of the title?"
   

She also recommends that everyone come to the meeting with one question they want to ask about the book.

On the topic of choosing books, she had several suggestions. First, she mentioned that books on best seller lists commonly are "story-driven" books that are fun to read, but not necessarily good for discussion. One attendee recommended BookSense which is a website for independent book sellers. Our club has also found good reviews at Chinaberry.

Second, she recommends that clubs pick a minimum of 6 months of reading (instead of picking a new book each month). This allows clubs to read "topically" (i.e. for 3 months your topic could be Iran, and you could read Persepolis (a graphic novel), then House of Sand and Fog (fiction), then Persian Mirrors (nonfiction) and find connections between books/authors.

She suggested having one meeting solely for choosing the upcoming 6-12 books. Everyone brings books they think would be good for discussion (she thinks someone should have read the book to make sure it's good for discussion). Instead of having a straight "vote" on books, she offered the following method: give each bookclub member 50 beans (or pennies) and when all of the books have been presented, club members get to vote with their 50 beans. If there's a book someone really wants to read, they can put more beans on it, weighting their vote.

Some books (and opening questions for discussion) Nancy recommended are:

1. Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose
   
2. Ann Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
3. Toni Morrison's Beloved
4. Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods (what happened to his wife?)
   
5. Anne Ursu's The Disapparation of James
6. Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine
7. Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
8. Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex
9. M. T. Anderson's Feed
10. Ward Just's A Dangerous Friend
11. Willa Cather's My Antonia
12. Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter (why did the author choose to tell the story from the point of view of four people?)
13. Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying (what's the lesson and who learned it?)

To see a list of what the Bluestocking have been reading since 1999, go here.