Nov 19

Books on the Nightstand Podcast, #18: Co-ed Book Group? Try These.

By Michael Kindness Book Group Resources, Podcasts Add comments

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Books on the Nightstand, Episode 18 (21:13)

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It’s all about book groups in this episode. We begin by talking a bit about our jobs, something the folks over at our Goodreads group have been asking for. We’ll cover a little about our jobs at the beginning of the next few episodes. This time around it’s the presentations we give to book groups. Talking about books to fellow book lovers… how great is that?headphones

In the second segment, we give you several titles we think would be good for any book group whether it’s made up of all women, all men or a mix. In addition to the four main books, we also mention six books we’ve discussed before (this list links to the original posts or podcasts where the book was discussed):

Lastly, we present our usual “Two Books We Can’t Wait For You to Read.” Ann discusses Blindspot, a fun, historical-fiction romp from two very well-respected academics. Michael geeks out over Fables, a long-running comic book, which has just released a pivotal trade paperback collection.
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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:
Any Human Heart by William Boyd, Vintage trade paperback
Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado, Three Rivers Press trade paperback
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Algonquin trade paperback
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Vintage trade paperback
Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, Spiegel & Grau trade paperback
Anything by Ian McEwan, Anchor trade paperbacks
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, NAL trade paperback
The Rotter’s Club by Jonathan Coe, Vintage trade paperback
Stoner by John Williams, New York Review Books Classics trade paperback
River of Doubt by Candice Millard, Broadway trade paperback
Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, Spiegel & Grau hardcover
Fables, Vol. 11: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, DC/Vertigo trade paperback
(all information is for the U.S. editions).
  • http://www.knitthink.typepad.com Amy

    I’m reading Fraction of the Whole right now and loving it. I think it would make a great book for a book club, if the members are ambitious. Sadly, the book clubs I used to belong to were more of the “if it’s more than 250 pages I don’t want to read it”, so they would never tackle something like this.

  • http://www.knitthink.typepad.com Amy

    I’m reading Fraction of the Whole right now and loving it. I think it would make a great book for a book club, if the members are ambitious. Sadly, the book clubs I used to belong to were more of the “if it’s more than 250 pages I don’t want to read it”, so they would never tackle something like this.

  • http://www.thornmagazine.com Jake

    Yes! Totally agreed with you about Fable– luckily Bookswim carries the series, so I could afford to read it all the way through. Pillars of the Earth, though? Are you sure about a book set in medieval times that includes the line “Suddenly, Jack had a brainwave”?

  • http://www.thornmagazine.com Jake

    Yes! Totally agreed with you about Fable– luckily Bookswim carries the series, so I could afford to read it all the way through. Pillars of the Earth, though? Are you sure about a book set in medieval times that includes the line “Suddenly, Jack had a brainwave”?

  • Sofia

    I’ve been in a co-ed book group since 2004. I never thought about how the group’s co-ed nature affected our book selection. We have gone through periods of reading classic fiction, Nobel Prize winning fiction, & also read some contemporary fiction. We don’t pay any attention to whether an author is female or male in selecting.

  • Sofia

    I’ve been in a co-ed book group since 2004. I never thought about how the group’s co-ed nature affected our book selection. We have gone through periods of reading classic fiction, Nobel Prize winning fiction, & also read some contemporary fiction. We don’t pay any attention to whether an author is female or male in selecting.

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