Book Clubs

I have been in a number of book clubs over the years, some in person and some online. One of the reasons I enjoy book clubs is that I get introduced to authors that I would not have chosen for myself.

Some of those authors that I didn't know before, later became favorites of mine, like Tananarive Due. And others, I would not have touched with a 10-foot pole, but I read because the book club was reading. Now at least I can talk about those authors with more direct knowledge, but I still won't touch them again without prodding. I won't name names.

I know of some book clubs that have been together for 10 - 20 years. The longest running one I was in lasted 4 years. The online book clubs I have been in lasted a year or less. The ones that died, died for similar reasons.

Too many members only want to read the kind of books that they already read. For the in-person clubs, this meant that some people only came to the meeting when we discussed the book they chose. We changed the rules to disallow that after a while. With online book clubs, many people just don't read the books that are outside their comfort zone.

I recently joined another online book club through a yahoo group. I'll see how long I last with this one.