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A Year of Reading: A Month-By-Month Guide to Classics and Crowd-Pleasers for You and Your Book Group
There are more than fifty thousand new books published each year. Choosing what to read can seem overwhelming. A Year of Reading relieves the anxiety by helping readers find just the right book for each month of the year.
Aimed at individuals and reading groups, A Year of Reading provides five fiction and nonfiction selections for each month with thorough summaries in the following Crowd-Pleasers, Classics, Challenges, Memoirs and Potluck. This book also makes reading more fulfilling by providing additional selections, plus questions about the selections to stimulate thought and discussion.
Also included is information on authors, reviews, video and Internet resources and annotated lists of related reading. And if you still think reading is too passive, try one of the many activities suggested, such as author readings, visits to museums, nature hikes and more.
The appendices focus on book clubs, from the basics of starting your own to improving a group that has been together for some time.
Aimed at individuals and reading groups, A Year of Reading provides five fiction and nonfiction selections for each month with thorough summaries in the following Crowd-Pleasers, Classics, Challenges, Memoirs and Potluck. This book also makes reading more fulfilling by providing additional selections, plus questions about the selections to stimulate thought and discussion.
Also included is information on authors, reviews, video and Internet resources and annotated lists of related reading. And if you still think reading is too passive, try one of the many activities suggested, such as author readings, visits to museums, nature hikes and more.
The appendices focus on book clubs, from the basics of starting your own to improving a group that has been together for some time.
336 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 12, 2014
I picked this up at the bargain book rack at Hastings a couple years ago. I've been reading it a little at a time since then. The book recommended books for a book club. Most of the recommendations, however, were not the type of books I would normally be interested in and were not ones my book club members would probably enjoy either. I think they were geared more toward women's issues. It kept me interested enough to continue seeing what books were recommended, but did not motivate me to consider reading more than one or two of the recommendations. Hence, the lower rating.
April 26, 2009
I love books about books. This one is set up nicely, with five book choices for each month of the year. However, the topics for each month weren't incredibly intriguing to me. I did get a few "to-read" book ideas though.
August 23, 2017
Given the state of the internet, you might not need this sort of book ever again but I am still drawn to this variety of book like a moth to a flame. It truly is rather unfortunate though, since this book really does have some good advice and interesting tidbits of information about authors and other things. It talks about how to set up a book club and has suggestions of other books you might like based on the book in question.
The book says it suggests sixty books to start out with, but that isn't entirely accurate. Each month suggests five books and each book has a suggested reading section. It gives a short synopsis of the book and tells you about other things the author has done. So it is a bit like a printed version of Goodreads, only instead of having readers suggest other books to you, we have a person with a Ph.D. and a member of a book club. So I suppose I could say that this book is more gated in some ways than Goodreads, but since it is printed it is far more limited in the content it can address.
Given those points, it is not really disappointing or upsetting that this book is out there. Since it was printed in 2002 I suppose there was no way for them to predict the explosive popularity of the internet as we have it now.
The book says it suggests sixty books to start out with, but that isn't entirely accurate. Each month suggests five books and each book has a suggested reading section. It gives a short synopsis of the book and tells you about other things the author has done. So it is a bit like a printed version of Goodreads, only instead of having readers suggest other books to you, we have a person with a Ph.D. and a member of a book club. So I suppose I could say that this book is more gated in some ways than Goodreads, but since it is printed it is far more limited in the content it can address.
Given those points, it is not really disappointing or upsetting that this book is out there. Since it was printed in 2002 I suppose there was no way for them to predict the explosive popularity of the internet as we have it now.
July 26, 2012
This is a fabulous book that gives some great book suggestions, for on your own reading, or for your book club! Gives both classics and contemporaries fair due. The authors give a thorough explanation of the plot, so you know what you are reading! I found a ton of books in here to add to my reading list!
October 1, 2008
I did glean a few ideas from this book but not as many as I was hoping.
January 6, 2009
It helps you plan what you (and maybe your book group) will read in the coming year.
December 29, 2009
5 catagories for each month: crowd-pleaser, classic, challenge, memoir, and potluck
October 9, 2013
This is a great resource, especially for book clubs, but also for readers. I liked that the author provided book synopses, info about the author, and additional reads.
January 14, 2017
I really just skimmed this book, looking at the recommendations. Some seem interesting.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews