Bookclub lists for 2008

ccrdmrbks

18 years ago

my book club does not do a list for the year either. We take turns bringing three possible choices to a meeting. The group chooses one of the books to read for the next meeting, and whoever proposed the book leads the discussion. Sometimes, if we like more than one of the choices, another member will volunteer to lead the 2nd discussion at the following meeting. We only meet every other month, so there is plenty of time to acquire the book, either by buying it or from the library, and get it read.
We've been in business for several years, and it has worked out quite nicely. We were all friends in another organization first, so knew each other and how we would work together before we committed to the book club.

cindydavid4

18 years ago

Two of my RL clubs choose up to three months. One, the General Fiction, used to do 6 months, but last november we had so many choices to choose from that we were able to do all 12. The problem I see with that is new books coming out that people want to read sooner. We'll see how this works, but suspect folks will want to go back to 3 or 6 month lists.

Related Discussions

grow lists 2008

Q

Comments (38)

Hello Bryan! Trish too! Sounds like you two are doing well. I've been absent from the forum for awhile due to several reasons. I really wrecked my back last fall(ruptured my L5, S1 disk) and went through pyshical therapy for 4 months in order to be able to work this year. I have avoided surgery for the time being and so far, this planting season hasn't been too awfully painful. I've added some new woodies to my "already too large for one person to manage" field. I put in 100 Avalanche lilacs, 50 Ruby spice summersweet, 50 Arnold red honeysuckle, 50 Guincho purple elder, 100 Saugeana Chinese lilac, 50 Calicapra beautyberry, 20 Exochorda pearlsbush, 50 Fothergilla mount airy, 50 French pussy willow, 50 Charles Joly lilac, 50 Pres Grevy lilac, 50 chinese lilac sunday, 50 Asessippi Lilac, and 20 Seven-son flower. That field has now grown to 9 acres of woodies. I started it 5 years ago and I'll finally be able to harvest my snowball viburnum, cranberry viburnum, blue muffin viburnum, pee-gee hydrangea. I will also be able to harvest some lilacs; Sensation, Beauty of moscow, Wedgewood blue, Monge purple, Mount baker, and Pocahontas. Some of my baptisia crosses will flower for the first time this year as well, so I will finally see what the hybrids look like. The annuals are prety much the same as most with Suns, Zins and glads making up the bulk of the main event flowers. I should have about a 1/2 acre of butterfly milkeed this year. That orange always looks great with the purple hoary vervain and suns. I also have the rest of my natives to compliment the boquets. Due to my back injury, we didn't do nearly as many wreaths last year, hopefully this year I can stay injury free. Trish, We might be taking a late summer trip to Michigan. Where are you located and would you mind visitors? Nice to read all the info and see what people are up to again. It gets me amped up to get er' done! Take care, Steve

HAVE: updated seed list for 2008!

Q

Comments (1)

Hi Netty, I'd be interested in some of your melons...please check my page to see if there's anything there you're interested in. thanks, Elizabeth Victorian_Bellefonte

WANTED: haves list for 2008 fall mag swap

Q

Comments (16)

I have: Homemade self-watering containers made out of pickle/egg buckets. Probably some 4 gallon + 2 reservoir and 2 gallon + 2 reservoir. A couple of each size. Leftover pieces - most of a "container watering" or small garden set, plus some drip hose, plus a few adjustable low flow sprinkler heads. It doesn't work for gravity-fed container gardening, unless you add on a timer. Fine pine bark mulch - about 1/4" x 1/2" x 1" pieces. I have a 2 cu ft plus an open 2 cu ft bag - probably about 1 cu ft left. They were $3.99 each Fedco seeds - split seed packets that I ordered. 2008 seeds. swallow eggplant - small trade 10 or 20 seeds? 3666SW Swallow Eggplant (51 days) F-1 hybrid. DonÂt believe you can grow eggplant in this cold part of the world? Swallow could make you a believer because it is early, producing glossy purple-black tender fruit of the elongated (1-3/4x7") oriental type without the bitterness often associated with larger eggplants. No wonder it was our most popular eggplant with sales of nearly 1,200 packets last year. mache - trade hundreds or even thousands? 3102VC Verte de Cambrai MÃ¢che (45 days) A small-seeded small-leaved strain which performs especially well in cool or cold conditions and is the best kind for over-wintering. May be the same variety Thomas Jefferson grew in 1810 under the name Candia. thai basil .5 g =.018g = 324 trade maybe 50-100 in a batch? 4470TB Thai Basil This basil lends the distinctly strong licorice-anise flavor to Thai food. An attractive 12-18" fine-leaved plant with purple stems, seed heads and flowers. Good container plant as well. 60 days to harvest. I have some sugar snap peas (maybe trade 20-50? I have ~100)and bought some nitrogen activator, but can't find the activator. Ferry Morse $.99 basic packets for 2008 of: grand rapids tipburn resistant lettuce (800 mg) , bloomsdale long standing spinach (2.0 g) cauliflower Early snowball A (245mg) radish sparkler (1.50 g) Broccoli De Cicco (800mg)

Mini-Flora List, October 2008

Q

Comments (0)

rosefolly

18 years ago

We pick a year's worth at a time, more or less. We have about a dozen members and everybody suggests a book Sometimes people only offer one, and somtimes they offer two or three that other members can select from. Then the club takes a trip and meets the author of one of the books. I have not yet gone on one of these trips, and have a conflict with this year's trip too, but they always have a lot of fun. One of these days I'm going to make it!

Rosefolly

bookmom41

18 years ago

I know I've posted about this before so at the risk of boring some of you... my club does choose a year or so in advance and we stick to the schedule. We hold a planning meeting, at which each member (about a dozen) brings two or three choices. Each member presents their choices, the club votes on that member's offerings and the winning book is assigned a month; the member who proposed the book is responsible for leading the discussion of her book and chooses the restaurant in which we meet. Our rules are pretty loose---no terribly fluffy books like romances or flava-of-the-month bios, the book should be available in paperback, and we try, in drawing up our schedule, to assign a lighter piece of reading for December. We usually end up with plenty of contemporary fiction with a few non-fiction and "classics" choices mixed in.

Thyrkas, why do you use book kits from the library exclusively? Is there an advantage and what do the kits include? Just curious.

thyrkas
Original Author

18 years ago

bookmom- we have used the library book kits approximately 95% of the time. In the three years we have been meeting we have purchased two books, and one of those was a trilogy. Many of the women who started in this book club don't have the disposable income necessary to purchase a new book monthly, nor do they have access to the internet, where purchasing a book can be very reasonable. So, using the library book kits works out well for them, cost-wise.
The library we use has a list of 67 book kits at present, 27 of which we have read. The kit contains 12 books, and sometimes an audio book. It also has a folder with a Reader's Guide and questions to start the discussion rolling. Also in that folder is the form to submit for the next book selection. The library allows the book kit to be checked out for 6 weeks, with no renewal.
There are lots limitations to using book kits, but for people who would not otherwise have the means to be a part of a book club, it is pretty terrific!

bookmom41

18 years ago

Thank you for the explanation. If your club wants to read a book for which there is not a kit, if your library has enough copies, your members could put them on reserve. I rarely buy a book, preferring to use the library, but our book this month is the popular Three Cups of Tea and all the copies are checked out with a waiting list; luckily, Target had a paperback on sale.

ccrdmrbks

18 years ago

Idea from my bookclub:

We have gathered all the copies of the book we read that members had purchased, along with the notes of the discussion leader, and donated them to either the women's prison in the hometown of a member, or a women's long-term shelter. In effect, I discover, we have made a book kit. Some specific titles would not be appropriate, obviously, but reading as a way of comfort or social interaction is always appropriate. Senior Citizen residences might be another place that these "kits" would be welcome.

thyrkas
Original Author

18 years ago

cc- that is a very generous way to re-use your reading group's books. I imagine that it makes a lot of book lovers happy!

Bookmom - you are right about putting several titles of a book on 'reserve' at the library - it can be done that way. It's not as easy or as efficient as a book kit, but it works in a pinch! BTW, I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea - I found it very interesting and inspiring. I do think Greg Mortenson is amazing, but I can see why people would get frustrated to the max with him.

vickitg

18 years ago

I've also mentioned this before, but the way we pick books is to have a book exchange at our Christmas party every year. The person who brings the book is supposed to read it before wrapping it up for the exchange. Then the person who receives the book reads it before the January meeting. At that meeting we each report on the book we received/read and tell whether or not we think it would make a good selection. We usually come up with four or five titles for that year. Then we just fill in with titles that people come up with from other sources.

Consequently, we won't have our list until after the next meeting, which is this Wednesday. After that, I will share the list of books we come up with. Does anyone else have a list for this year, yet?

vickitg

18 years ago

My book club met last night and everyone reported on the book they had read from our book exchange. Below I have listed the books exchanged. I put an asterisk by the books we chose to put on our discussion list for the year. A "no decision" means the person wasn't there to report on the book.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist* Â Mohsin Hamid
Love Walked In Â Marisa de los Santos
Three Cups of Tea* by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Girls* - Lori Lansens
Suite Francaise* - Irene Nemerovsky
Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife* - Irene Spencer
Peony in Love Â Lisa See (no decision yet)
Broken for You Â Stephanie Kallos (no decision yet)

bookmom41

18 years ago

My club really enoyed Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson is an awe-inspiring man.

We don't have a new list yet for 2008 since we have a few months left in our old schedule. TBR are Small Island by Andrea Levy, To Kill a Mockingbird, Grisham's Innocent Man and Alison Weir's Innocent Traitor--looking forward to all of them. (and no, we did not have a trial theme going on.) Am I the only person who hasn't yet read one of Lisa See's books?

thyrkas
Original Author

18 years ago

bookmom - I haven't read any of Lisa See's books. I don't even recognize her name - am I way behind the curve on this?

Also, the librarian who handles the book kits called to say there was a need for me to pick two books in a row -right NOW! So, although usually everyone gets a chance to put down their choices from the list of book kits at the meeting, I made an 'executive decision'. So here are the first three books of 2008 from our book club:

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
The Preservationist by David Maine
Gilead by Marilyn Robinson

cindydavid4

18 years ago

>The Preservationist by David Maine
Gilead by Marilyn Robinson

Oh, I'd love to discuss both of those. Please let me know what your group thought of them. The first one is rather grim, but Ithought it an amazing imagining of the original story.

In my RL group, this month was These is my words; next month will be Allende's Inez of my Soul. They have books in order through the year, but I don't have my list handy. I know we are at some point discussing Hummingbird's Daughter, Saramago's Blindness, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. In my Sci Fi group, this month was the Good Omen which was great fun to discuss with folk who are much more sci fi than fantasy. Next month is Darwin's Radio, which is a hard science story about gene theory. Looks daunting but also sounds rather interesting.

bookmom41

18 years ago

Thyrkas, I work in a library and Lisa See's books fly out of there--which makes the oppositional part of me not want to read them. Just wondering if I'm missing something!

cindydavid4

18 years ago

>Am I the only person who hasn't yet read one of Lisa See's books?

I've never heard of her. Are you reading her for a book group? What type of books does she write?

cindydavid4

18 years ago

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. We are reading that too this year. I haven't read anything else by her, but have heard this was very good. We'll see - there is a lot about foot binding in here that I can probably do without (too much non fiction reading of Chinese history in my younger days)

kathy_t

18 years ago

Last week, my book club chose titles to get us through the next five months:

Feb - Biography of choice (rather than my Madeleine Albright suggestion)
Mar - The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
Apr - Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
May - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Jun - Atonement by Ian McEwan

ccrdmrbks

18 years ago

next up for our bookclub: The Emperor's Children. I take three in March-so far, I have decided to take In This House of Brede, Mistress of the Art of Death, and a player to be named later. I'll be watching this thread for suggestions.

Bookclub lists for 2008

Comments (18)

ccrdmrbks

cindydavid4

Related Discussions

rosefolly

bookmom41

thyrkas
Original Author

bookmom41

ccrdmrbks

thyrkas
Original Author

vickitg

vickitg

bookmom41

thyrkas
Original Author

cindydavid4

bookmom41

cindydavid4

cindydavid4

kathy_t

ccrdmrbks

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

Bookclub lists for 2008

Comments (18)

Related Discussions

thyrkasOriginal Author

thyrkasOriginal Author

thyrkasOriginal Author

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

thyrkas
Original Author

thyrkas
Original Author

thyrkas
Original Author