What Will You Read Next?

I know, I have stacks and piles everywhere, too.  Sometimes, though, I feel like I am in a rut and need something that I don't already have sitting around. 

If you feel the same you need a personalized reading list. 

My local library, and others around the country, will put together a personalized reading list based on your answers to a brief questionnaire.  The questions are simple: favorite authors, genre, and books.  You will also be ask about things you don't like.  I don't read books with a focus on concentration camps, I just don't.  I filled out the questionnaire then submitted it online.  It really is that simple. 

In a very short time, ten days to two weeks, I had a new specialized list created just for me.  My first list had ten choices with a short synopsis of the books, a link to the book in the online library catalog and a statement about why this book was chosen for me.  I appreciate that this list was created by real librarians not a computer program.

Thanks to this service I have discovered and fallen in love with new (to me) authors such as Wilkie Collins.  I had never heard of him so did not know that he is considered the father of the modern detective novel.

Moonstone was suggested to me.  I downloaded it onto my Kindle for free then enjoyed the book and author immensely.  Collins was a friend and colleague of Arthur Conan Doyle who I have liked for years.  In addition, I have read and enjoyed all ten of the books on my reading list.  Only one was a repeat for me, but I followed up on the suggestion to listen to the audio book of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand if I had read it previously.  

Contact your local library to see if they offer this service, many do.  Meanwhile my suggestion is to check out Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.  If you like classic detective mysteries you won't be disappointed.

Book Club Tonight!

Not only is tonight my monthly book club meeting, it is our annual planning meeting.  We will begin with a draft calendar and our individual lists, then finish with twelve book picks for 2012.  Several years ago we decided that planning ahead helped us to get the books we wanted to read and discuss.  Some members get them from High Plains Library District, some from a book swap, and others purchase the physical book or get it on our Kindles. 

The problem is too many choices.  At most we will each add two books for next year.  I have two pages of notes on books I would like to recommend and it has taken me all afternoon to narrow it down to four choices.  Maybe I will be lucky and someone else will have picked some of them as well. 

Yes, I could just read them anyway, and I do, but some books just demand to be discussed.  Our membership has been pretty constant throughout the years, we have become friends not just members.  An outsider would think that we get off track a lot, not so.  The people and events in our reading calls up the emotions and similarities in our own lives.  There are books that just must be discussed with fellow book lovers.  It creates another deminision. 

My list for tonight includes The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, The Reading Promise:  My Father and the Books We Share by Alice Ozma, Flaw by Magdalena Tulli and The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, translated by Cathy Porter.  I don't know yet which ones I will actually choose as we put pen to paper. 

Tonight we will snack as we discuss this month's pick--The Chili Queen by Sandra Dallas.  We will solve the problems of the world, reccomend the books we read this month, and plan a whole new year of books.