Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Posting #54: "Social Networking Through Books" Exercise #1

1) I have never been a member of a Book Club. I think I would prefer to be a member of an on-line book club so I could remain anonymous. Reading Children's books is one thing...what I read for fun on my own time is just for me. I do believe the reasoning behind an in-person book club would be the face to face interaction which really social people would enjoy...but that is not for me.
2) The staff here at Freeman have started their own book club. It meets once a month and any staff member is welcome to attend. Staff members meet and discuss something they have recently read and anything goes from a book, to an article in a journal, to an interesting website they discovered. Each participant can talk for just a minute or up to about 5 minutes about what they brought with them (they are asked to bring the item or information for finding it with them). After the club ends, one staff member writes up a summary of the items discussed so others can see what they missed for whatever reason. Some staff attend every month, some attend occasionally and others do not attend at all. It is totally optional...no pressure what-so-ever. I like that.
Using ReadingGroupGuides I looked for a book that I have read and think others might enjoy...if I shared it with them. The book was called Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella. I liked this site because it had great thought provoking (or discussion starters) about the book. Some were questions I asked myself and tried to figure out as I read along such as "What were your theories about what happened to Lexi? I tried several scenarios in my mind as I read along. I kept changing them as the story progressed and then, in the end, enough information had been shared to let me "see" just what had happened. I was able to laugh at the situation, and I enjoyed the book. Others may enjoy it as well and find their first idea about what happened are way off from what actually did happen. This book would most likely be fun for a Romance Lovers Book Club.

3) I searched for Twenty Wishes on Shelfari. After I signed on a new account for this site, I found that 642 people had read the book and it had a four out of five star rating. Not bad for a romance novel by a tried and true romance author, Debbie Macomber. Next I looked it up on LibraryThing (LT) and found that it also had a four star rating out of five. I guess most people liked the book while a mere few were not quite as impressed. I will reserve judgement on it until I have read it for myself.

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