If you’re in a book club, how do you decide what books to read? In some groups, everyone takes turns choosing a book. In others, they take a vote. Others encourage everyone to read a different book and then report on it to the group. Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, is in a group that reads 50 books a year, choosing from a list that includes “a book with a word or phrase that describes you in the title,” “a book with a color in the title, “a book you first heard about in social media,” and other suggestions. These broad categories make for reading that’s invigorating, mind-expanding, and serendipitous. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “How to Choose Books for a Book Club”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. If you’re in a book club, how do you all decide what books you’re going to read? In some groups, everybody takes a turn choosing a book. And I know that there are other groups where everybody votes on which book they’re going to read. And I also know of groups where everybody chooses a different book and comes ready to make a little presentation to the group about that book, so you learn about several different books in one sitting. So which of those works best?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, ever since I heard an interview with the president of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinsky. She’s in a group that reads 50 books a year in 50 different categories, and the categories are really cool. I reached out to her to find out what kinds of books they read. And the list of categories includes a book you first heard about on social media, a book with a color in the title, a book with a word or phrase in the title that describes you. And she says approaching reading this way has really opened up her mind. For example, one of the books that she was supposed to read was a book that’s generated a lot of popular buzz. So she ended up reading Paris Hilton’s memoir.
And she said she actually liked it, that it opened up her mind and it made her think in some new ways. So she’s really glad that she read it.
And Grant, I’m really fascinated by this idea of lexical cross-training. You know, sometimes I can get in a particular mode where I’m just reading a certain kind of book. And I really like this idea of stretching my mind a little bit, stretching my reading to accommodate that kind of list of books.
I love it, too. There’s something about escaping the tyranny of the bestseller list that can lead you down wonderful new paths. Because there are so many books published each year, you have to slice and dice them to get down to something manageable. None of us are going to read all that many books in a given year.
I think I read more than most people, but a lot of my stuff is fantasy fiction or genre fiction, that sort of thing. But when I read the high-level stuff, I do fall into niches and ruts. And I think it is amazing just to say, what kind of random, wonderful thing will I find if I only go for books that have the word cowboy in the title or purple? Or where the author is somebody who’s not from this continent or anything, or it’s in translation from Polish, you know, what am I going to get? I might get something amazing.
Well, we’d be really interested to hear how you choose the books that you read, especially if you’re in a book club. How do you all come to that decision? And do you have some kind of list of categories to choose from? Or what would your list look like to expand your reading?
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