When you lead a book club discussion, it is important to add value to the group by bringing in additional information about the author, time period, locale, literary form, etc. One valuable place to find a lot of this information is on the author's website. Knowing more about an author's personal life, education, prior works, geographic location, even "pets", can bring new insight to the book under discussion.
On several occasions, book club participants have e-mailed the author via his/her website, and received responses that they shared during the discussion. This includes author like Robert Kurson (Shadow Divers), Dave King (The Ha-Ha), and Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) who responded directly, as well as less-approachable authors like Jeffrey Archer (Eleventh Commandment) whose office staff replies.
I don't have just ONE favorite author, but I have many of them that I like a lot. For purposes of this exercise, I will look up Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, as well as other books. In the Events section, I found out that he will be in Houston on April 27, at Murder by the Book at 12:30pm and at Brazos Book store at 7:00. I suppose these will be just sales events. I wish he would be appearing at a library or a lecture hall where I could hear him speak, rather than just wait in a long line for a signed book. Besides the events calendar, the website has lots of promotional stuff about his many books, audio excerpts, video interviews, and links to print articles about his work.
McCall Smith is a fascinating character! Besides writing perfect books from the viewpoint of a "traditionally built" Botswana woman, he has been a professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and Vice Chairman of the Human Genetics Commission of the UK. What a mind this man must have!
Exercise 2: Does the idea of a book being published based on popular vote give you more or less faith in the material?
A large popular vote might give me more confidence in the material. After all, this is what the New York Times Bestseller list is all about. People in that case vote with their wallets.
Readers' tastes are so different, though, that just a high popular vote is not enough for me to tell if I will like something. This is true with books, but even more so with movies. Having free access to a wide variety of choices is the American (and the library!) way.
1 comment:
Good job! Thanks for keeping up with iHCPL.
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