One of the great perks of my job is that I get to go to a conference every year and at that conference publishers from large to small are there peddling their wares hoping a school will select one of their titles to use for their common reading program. The university I work for no longer has a common reading program, but with the size of our university sometimes the amount of books I purchase for my groups can be comparable to what some small colleges would buy anyway. Suffice to say, as a total book nerd I can't help but get every free copy of a book that looks good to me. This usually means before I fly home I have to find a shipping company to ship one, or two boxes of books to the office for me. This is an example of what this years haul looked like. Isn't it fabulous!?
For the faculty and staff book group, once I get home I will go through the books again and pull the copies of the books that I think they will most likely select or have mentioned they would like to read. In addition to these selections the group also can submit titles they have an interest in. I compile all of those titles with a brief synopsis onto a long list and each participant gets to pick three books. The top three titles are selected and I'll have my books selected for the fall, spring, and summer book group.
For my students I do things in a bit more of a fly by the seat of my pants kinda way. As students are making their way through summer orientation I have a clipboard at our info fair where they can sign up to participate and suggest book titles. As the summer goes on I compile that list of titles and then I have to do some weeding out. I'm always a bit amazed in a good and bad way by some of the titles they suggest. Austen, Fitzgerald, Heller or King tend to always be on the list, classics will always be around and students will always want to read them. The shocking has happened more in the past two years, I can't tell you how many times 50 Shades of Grey has been suggested. That is not going to happen for SO many reasons. They may be in college, but I have some parameters as a leader. Don't get me wrong, its each persons business what they read, but I am not going to have a discussion with 18 year old's about S&M, sorry just not gonna happen!
Moving on. Similar to the faculty group once I have narrowed down their list the students each get to select six books and those will be what we read that year.
For both groups there are a few other things I do look at:
1. the price
2. the length
3. hard cover vs paperback
4. Young Adult vs. Adult
5. Serial vs Non Serial
6. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biography, Self-Help, Science
If the book is to expensive (usually hardback), or too long, I am vary wary of choosing it because I do have to buy so many and I also want to make sure people will read them. For the student group in the past I have done my best to omit young adult and serial literature from the lists, but I've given in on that. If they want to read it and if I think I can have a valid discussion with it I'll do it. The faculty group tends to read non-fiction so I really make an effort to try and make selections that aren't too similar to what we have chosen in the past.
If you don't have the option of going to meet with publishers like I do - don't fret, there are other ways to make your selection. Some groups read selections by certain authors, a certain genre, others pick based on current events. Those are all great ideas. If that isn't something your group likes the idea of, look at some resources you can find easily, check your local newspaper or magazines for the weeks top sellers or new releases, browse the top sellers section at the book store or simply get your book group to come up with a list of books they've always wanted to read, create a list of those and start reading.
One word of warning: BEWARE PRAISE IN REVIEWS. I will highlight this issue more in other blogs, but just know, a good review doesn't mean you will love the book. Also a good review can also be a bad thing when you select a book based on them only to find out the author lied or plagiarised him/herself when writing.
I'd love to hear feedback on how your group picks its books,
Magpie
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