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Novels That Take Us Back to School

Reading Group Choices presents novels that take us back to school

That time of year has arrived: Back to school! Gym uniforms, freshly-sharpened colored pencils, overpriced textbooks. Algebra homework and PhD dissertations. That touch of excitement to see familiar faces after summer break, mixed with a healthy amount of resignation.

(Non-Required) Reading

For students, that means much assigned reading. But for the rest of us, we can prepare for the season and indulge in a vicarious school experience on the page.

Reading Group Choices presents a list of fiction, both adult and young adult, with a connection to school. These titles range in subject matter from elementary to university (with some witchcraft thrown in for good measure).

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You Will Be Found: Dear Evan Hansen & Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

Dear Evan Hansen is one of our book group favorites for 2018

I wish that everything was different. I wish that I was a part of something. I wish that anything I said mattered, to anyone.

Evan Hansen dreads the new school year. He’ll be a senior, and his arm is strapped with a cast from when he fell from a tree over the summer. His father left for Colorado and lives with a new wife, while his mother works as a nurse and takes classes, and so is rarely around. Evan has social anxiety and takes Atavan to calm down. His therapist, Dr.

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The September Spotlight Group Is…

The Reading Group Choices Spotlight Book Group in September 2019 is The Page Turners

September 2019 Spotlight: The Page Turners

Our September Spotlight Group celebrates 25 years and awards prizes for their favorite books!

Our group is called The Page Turners, and since we began in 1994, we have turned a lot of them! We are a group of women in our 50s, and we meet monthly (except for June and July) at our members’ homes. We start with a planning weekend every August at a member’s lake house, where we organize our year, play in the lake, eat, and have fun catching up with each other. We each take a month to choose a book and lead the discussion.

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Book Group City Tour: New Orleans

New Orleans Book Group City Tour

Reading Group Choices heads south to New Orleans for the latest installment of our Book Group City Tour!

A mythic city known for its jazz, Cajun cuisine, French Quarter and life along the Mississippi, New Orleans is also steeped in literary history. From its annual Tennessee Williams festival to its independent bookshops, the Big Easy offers a sanctuary for readers.

As always, we looked for a variety of ways for readers to connect to book groups and enjoy bookish conversation. Several of the clubs are deeply connected to the city and region that inspires them.

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Reading Group Choices Interview with Kate Quinn

Reading Group Choices interview with Kate Quinn, author of The Huntress

The historical novel The Huntress by Kate Quinn tracks the intersecting lives of an English journalist, a Russian bomber pilot, and a Nazi war criminal living a secret life in Boston.

For her interview with Reading Group Choices, Kate Quinn spoke about her research process, women in the military, creating vivid landscapes, and the fascinating true stories that she just had to include in the book.

Reading Group Choices: Which voice was the first to appear?

Kate Quinn: Technically, Jordan’s—my youngest heroine, the teenaged photographer in Boston.

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How to Organize Your Books: A Guide

Reading Group Choices offers strategies for organizing books

There are certain perennial questions for a book lover: hardcover or paperback? E-reader or print? Write in the margins or never, ever mark a page?

And then there’s the matter of organizing your book collection, open to eternal debate. Genre, color, no scheme at all? Reading Group Choices understands, and we offer a few ideas to help readers arrange that growing home library!

Give Me Function!

When looking at your shelves or piles of books, first decide your goal: Are you frustrated because you can never find that title you’re looking for?

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