Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are. [Unknown]
Considering setting up a book club? You’ll find a world of helpful information at www.bookbrowse.com. Thanks to Zoom and other online connections, book clubs have thrived during the pandemic. In a recent survey with 3,417 responses, BookBrowse found that more than half of the respondents considered their virtual book groups to be even more important than when they could gather in person. Sixty-five percent reported that their members now meet remotely. (Seventeen percent are meeting outdoors.) Attendance for some clubs increased, since people who had moved away or couldn’t travel in bad weather or for other reasons could still sit in online. And some groups have discovered how convenient it is to invite authors to join them! BookBrowse also reviews books, in case you need a good one.
So are you looking for a good read? Last fall, Publisher’s Weekly ran a listing of their Top Ten Best Books 2020. I’m betting that the Longmont Library’s book buyer read this same issue and ordered all of the top ten, because when I searched for half of the titles, they were each available here. These included Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, and The Last Great Road Bum, by Hector Tobar, both nonfiction; and Sisters, by Daisy Johnson, and A Saint From Texas, by Edmund White, novels. The magazine’s top ten were followed by several pages describing other notable reads—-fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for adults, children, and teens. I also bet that if you nicely ask the reference desk librarian, as soon as the library reopens, you could take a look at the PW issue for October 26th, 2020.
In another survey, of more than 3,900 adult Americans who bought a book in the month prior to the survey, 92 percent were registered to vote, and 30 percent were more likely to vote than the average American.
Happiness is a book sale.
Happiness is finding a new book by your favorite author.
Read. It’s music you hear with your eyes. [Unknown]
