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Poetry Books For Great Conversation

February 22, 2017 Bookmark

If your group is interested in introducing poetry to your reading list, but isn’t sure how, take a look at the books below for a variety of approaches. Beyond just reading collections of poems, you can also explore essays about poetry, novels written in verse, and memoirs that feature lyric, poetic language. Here are our recommendations for where to start!

If you’d also like some suggestions for fun ways to integrate poems into your group or for approaches to discussing poetry, check out our post that addresses these very questions.

 

Upstream

by Mary Oliver

In Upstream,

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Little Free Library’s New Community-Service Book Club

February 06, 2017 Bookmark, News, Spotlight Book Groups

Little Free Library, a wonderful organization that RGC has partnered with in the past, has just launched a new initiative. Action Book Club (ABC) pairs a love of reading with community service in an effort to strengthen both minds and communities. Any pre-existing book club (or new club!) can sign-up to get involved. Many of the books we recommend here at RGC are also recommendations of ABC so it’s easy to integrate your own group’s reading with an ABC service project. Margret Aldrich of Little Free Library took a few minutes to answer some of our questions about this exciting initiative and provide details about how to sign up.

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Fiction, Meet Nonfiction

January 27, 2017 Bookmark, Themed Book Lists

By Scott Onak

Perfect Pairings of Cross-Genre Reads

Think of great pairings in the world, such as red wine with steak, hot chocolate with snowstorms, Simon with Garfunkel. Each one alone is fine, but the combination creates something new and different.

The same is true for reading groups. We often limit our book choices to one genre or the other, fiction or nonfiction. But one way to enrich your group’s discussion is to read a novel alongside a work of nonfiction, whether a biography, cultural study, or even the author’s own memoir or journals.

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Reading Group Choices Interview with Eimear McBride

January 07, 2017 Author Interviews, Bookmark
One of our recommended books is A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride talks about her debut novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing with Reading Group Choices.

Given the lyric prose in the first novel by Eimear McBride, we enjoyed discussion the style as much as the story itself. The book brought up many important and timely issues to discuss: gender, power, trauma, individuality and perception, and caused us to consider how the meaning of of these words/themes change when they are specifically tied to a woman’s story. We were lucky enough to have Eimear answer a few questions for us!

RGC Group: When you began writing the book or had the idea for the book,

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Creative Ideas for Your Reading Group

January 07, 2017 Advice, Bookmark

A New Year Can Bring New (and fun!) Ideas

Add some extra fun to your book club discussions this year by introducing creative and playful spins to your book club approach.

Character StudyThe Queen of the Night - Creative Club Ideas

Dress up as your favorite characters! You can keep it simple by limiting costumes to just one item—a mask for The Queen of The Night or Old West hats for Lady Cop Makes Trouble. You might also want to open the evening with an impersonation game to see what book club member best embodies the book’s protagonist.

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