New Book Clubs to Check Out

There are dozens of online book clubs worth checking out these days, as it's just not feasible for many people to meet in person every month. Unputdownables has a regular Read-A-Long, for instance, where readers can sign up to follow a weekly schedule of reading (usually) a classic piece of literature. Currently, the group is reading Wuthering Heights.

Slate also has a monthly book club in podcast form, which is a similar idea but not interactive, and The Globe & Mail has an online version where the ongoing comment list provides the discussion for the selected book. At Huffington Post, the book selection has its own subsite with relevant links and articles.

This site was created to give a forum for a group to read and comment on a book but we lived in different places and couldn't meet in person; it has evolved into an open discussion, for people to read or read along, join the discussion or contribute ideas.

Of course, search "book club" in Google Blog Search and you will  have myriad options. If you want to rediscover the classics, get into a different genre or just read other opinions about the books you love, there are many, many options online. It is low on commitment and expectation, and you can leave at any time. There is an option for everyone!

Calling all Bibliophiles

What makes a bibliophile? Do you love books more if you preserve them, stack them neatly, store them away for future generations to admire from afar? Are you any less a booklover if you write in them, fold them, engage with them, lend them without promise of getting it back? That's the question posed by Steven Leveen in "So... Are You Going to Write in That New Book?" from the Huffington Post. He posits two types of reader: Preservationsists ("They see books as cherished objects that eventually will be passed on to others. You shouldn't contaminate them with your thoughts of the moment") and Footprint Leavers ("For them, books are like food to be heartily enjoyed, and if need be, consumed in the interest of a healthy diet. Writing in the margins and underlining are healthy interactions and make the book more valuable to them, which is their concern. There are plenty of unmarked books to go to posterity, they say; this one book will give its all to them"). They are both bibliophiles, to be sure, but have opposite philosophies when it comes to the place of books in our culture. Myself, I am sort of midway - I don't write in the margins of my books, and I love the presence of books on the bookshelf, but I don't necessarily go to great lengths to protect my books - I want to read them, and engage with them as the physical objects they are. However, I have purchased a replacement copy of a book when a borrower left the borrowed copy in a well-read state (too much of a Footprint Leaver). So I suppose I am a Preservationist, just not an adamant one. You can do whatever you like to your own books, just leave mine alone.

Read Leveen's full article here.