October is National Book Club Month - Eat, Read and Discuss Together - Atlanta Literature

Courtesy of Seal Press

October marks the third annual National Reading Group Month, a program of The Women’s National Book Association in partnership with Booklist, the book review magazine of the American Library Association. If that sounds a little pedantic and scholarly, let’s call it National Book Club Month.

Book clubs are first and foremost about community, like-minded people who gather in person, and now online, to explore both the classical and contemporary written word in a convivial atmosphere. Gather, eat, drink, read and discuss, what could be more fun?

As with any trend the opportunity for marketing around the trend is exponential. Readers are not satisfied with participating, they want to know how to participate, how to start and run a club. How-to start a book group books and websites are multiplying daily and a Google search at the time of writing yields 67,000,000 results. The reason for this enormous number is that book clubs drill down to very specific niches. Cindy Hudson’s Book by Book, just out from Seal Press, targets mother-daughter book groups and, “provides all the tools one needs to create their own mother-daughter book club,” according to the author. While the book targets young daughters and mothers, the principles apply to any age and might even be more intriguing between adult daughters and mothers.

Reading Group Guides is an in-depth online resource. Bookstores and publishers have book groups and their websites list the meeting days and times, genres and details. Meetup.com is a superb resource for book groups, particularly when one relocates to a new city. Search within a city for book groups and what crops up is a plethora of options. Genres include literature, non-fiction, politics, poetry, mystery, sci-fi and you get the picture. Whatever your taste you are bound to find a group in your city. If you can’t find what you are looking for www.meetup.com will guide you through setting up a book club (or any group for that matter). Online book club groups may be convenient but they lack the warmth and spontaneous interaction of face-to-face get-togethers.

Marsha Toy Engstrom hails from Northern California and is The Book Club Cheerleader™ with an outstanding website and a job that seems to be more pleasure than work. “I use my background in coaching, team-building and group dynamics to help put the ‘group’ back in book groups,” says Engstrom. Her workshops present information from three perspectives: The People, The Fun and The Books. “I facilitate workshops and coach book clubs to get the most out of their experiences together,” says Engstrom whose motto is, “They come for The Book, they stay for The Fun, and they leave if you screw up The People part.” She is currently working on a book, “Celebrating Book Clubs: The Book Club Cheerleader’s Guide to Building a Winning Book Club.”

Workshops conducted by Ms. Engstrom run the gamut and are worthwhile before you start a group and to bring your lack-luster group back to its core mission. Engstrom’s workshops include: The 3 Principals of Highly Effective Book Clubs; The 6 Stages of Book Group Development—and Why You Should Care; 7 Traits of Ideal Book Club Members; Developing a Code of Conduct: How Setting Expectations Can Set You Free and something all groups could use; Trouble-shooting Book Group Issues: Behavioral Animal Problems and How to Tame Them.

Mothers and daughters have contentious relationships at the best of times and a book group of a bevy of such duos is a recipe for trouble. On the positive side it could create a common and non-threatening ground for parent and child to communicate about something that is external but also highly personal. Ms. Hudson includes some of the same topics as Ms. Engstrom regarding resolving conflicts among members and how to keep one’s club upbeat and vital. Book by Book carves out its niche with a chapter entitled, “Talking about Sex, Alcohol and other Touchy Subjects,” which are particularly difficult between mothers and daughters no matter the age.

Ms. Hudson includes several pages of recommendations for finding a book club on the Internet. Her list of 100 books that “might be right for your book club,” categorized by age group for readers between the ages of 7 to 14 includes Mary Norton’s Bed-Knob and Broomstick, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and The Good Earth along with contemporary selections such as The Secret Life of Bees. Notably absent is Are you There God, it’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume, a must-read for teenage girls and a reminder to their mothers of the teen experience. A section of recipes for noshes of the comfort food variety are yummy for any age and include Macaroni & Cheese, chili and a variety of cakes.

Most of our life is lived online today we barely see or actually speak to the people we love or work with. A book group (offline) revitalizes the art of story telling and conversation, which brought people together. Reading contextualizes our life experiences and allows us to dream about the different forks in the road one can take.

Upon learning that National Grandparents Day takes place in mid-September (celebrating its 30^th year in 2009), a child remarked, “but when is children’s day.” The grandmother replied, “Every day is children’s day.” Let’s make every day a reading day because we all know that, “knowledge is power.”

About the Author: Cindy Hudson

Seven years ago Cindy Hudson founded the first of two mother-daughter book clubs. A resident of Portland, Oregon, Hudson has more than two decades of marketing and public relations experience. Today she is a book club consultant, journalist, writer, editor and marketer. www.motherdaughterbookclub.com.

Book by Book

Seal Press

ISBN 13:978-1-58005-299-3

About The Book Group Cheerleader™

Marsha Toy Engstrom, AKA: The Book Club Cheerleader holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, and a Master’s of Arts in Management and Organizational Development. Her thesis was on group dynamics. She employs her background in coaching, team building, and group dynamics to help put the ‘group’ back in book groups. She is the founder and editor of the website. She is working on her first book, Celebrating Book Clubs: The Book Club Cheerleader’s Guide to Building a Winning Book Club.

About the National Reading Group Month Organizers

Booklist is the book review magazine of the American Library Association, considered an essential collection development and readers advisory tool by thousands of librarians for more than 100 years. Booklist Online includes more than 125,000 reviews as well as a free Web site offering the latest news and views on books and media. www.booklistonline.com

The Women’s National Book Association, founded in 1917, is the oldest continuously running women’s literary organization in the USA. For the past 90 years, it has united women – and now men – from every corner of the book world: writers, editors, librarians, bookstore owners, and more. It provides a vehicle through which members can act on their professional and personal commitment to champion the book and to stimulate the increased tolerance, social awareness, and civic involvement associated with reading. www.wnba-books.org.

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