 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a commission's weekly online event, webinar, webcast, whatever you want to call us. We're online and we're online every week. We'll recover anything that may be of interest to libraries, any library related topics. The show is free and open to anyone to watch as are our recordings on our website. We do the live show every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. If you're not able to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. You can always go to our website and all the recordings for all of our previous shows are available there, along with any PowerPoint presentations that might have been included or any kind of presentations, handouts, links to websites and whatnot is all collected so you can always watch it at your leisure. We do a mixture of things, presentations, interviews, book reviews, mini-training sessions. As I said, library related, we are happy to have it on the show. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do sessions and we have guest speakers sometimes. This week we have a mixture of that. Lisa Kelly is our, what is your title here? Information Services Director. She's here from Library Commission and Vicki Wood is new services supervisor at Lincoln City Libraries and they're going to talk about problems leading to book groups or issues. What if you don't have any sort of, you know, something preset to do a book group? Have you kind of come up with it? Yep. All right, so I will hand over to you guys and you can take a look. I think it's important for Vicki and I to talk about our book club backgrounds and what we do and how we've looked with them for and what duration of time and talk about the kind of book group that we're really covering today. There are many kinds of book groups, but we're going to be addressing a particular kind of book group and we hope that you can make that fit your needs. Additionally, Vicki has youth leadership for youth book group, book club discussion. So if that is something that you have an interest in, Vicki can address those things. So do interact with us if you have particular questions about adult versus youth book groups. So Vicki and I are in a book club together and have been so for four or so years. And I have a book group that meets in my house and has done so for 15 years. And we started with the one book, one LinkedIn, that was our impetus. So we can date ourselves back to that. And it's a coed book group. We have a couple of men, these men are writers. One has written a book that we discussed in our group. And it's mostly people who live in my building and librarians who join us to add good color to our conversations. And Vicki, what about you? What about your book clubs? Well, I've been in a variety of book clubs over the years. I currently am in three. Sort of sounds like an addict or something, but I have the very different groups. And part of my job at Lincoln City Libraries was training book group leaders to be leaders. And I did that probably for about 15 years. And that was a really rewarding and wonderful experience. And I learned a lot. And I think that a lot of the tips and ideas we have for leading book groups with children and teens translate into adult book groups. Good. I also want to clarify that this presentation today is purely about leading the discussion. A while back Vicki and I did one about how to lead a book group. But today we're going to talk really about the discussion. And it was precipitated by comments I've received from people. I've been asked to lead a book group. Do you have any questions? Here's the book. And if there aren't any questions, there's sometimes a real uncertainty about what, how do I do it? What do I do? Or I've also received comments from librarians who borrowed books from our book club kits. This was a terrible book. Nobody finished it. Nobody enjoyed it. So I'd really like to address those comments that we've recently been receiving to say, first of all, I don't think that's a bad thing. You're not all going to walk away from a book club discussion with a maybe a warm glow about you. Our last book club discussion was really kind of tough. Vicki was one of the few who championed it. And even the person who picked it, you know, I'm not sure was crazy about it, but it was a success. And it sometimes make it more interesting if you have conflicting opinions. And everyone said, oh, it was awesome. And I loved it. That's made pretty boring discussion about how everything was perfectly great in this book. And I do have a comment. It's one thing just to gush and gush and gush together about something. But what do we learn about that? So the conflict is what you're trying to navigate. And I don't mean to say conflict. I just mean to say varying opinions and they might not be conflict. So this also I wanted to qualify is maybe more prone to be helpful to those who are reading the same book title. Eight people reading the same book because there are book groups where sometimes you're all reading a different book. And so if that's your book group, we may not be addressing those issues entirely because that's really where you go around the room and give a little book review. So today's discussion will be more tailored to those book clubs who are all reading the same title. Let's see. So Vicki and I have some expectations that may or may not fit your book club. But we have some things that we think that are important. If you belong to a book group, you've already said, I'm going to read stuff I don't like. I'm going to be forced to read a book that's not in my favorite list. I normally read this, this, this Vicki, you normally read memoirs. I read a lot of fiction that's salted with a little nonfiction now and then. So if you're in a book group, this is just an agreement that you need to make with your co-readers. You want to expand upon that? Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think some people come in with both groups, not really understanding that concept. And I was actually in a book group for a long time where people kind of opted in and out like, I didn't really want to read that book. And we took turns choosing it. And it really is kind of not in the spirit of things to be that way. And everybody can choose how their book group works. But I think if you want your book group to be successful, you sort of have to start at that premise that your leisure reading is one thing and your book group reading is different. And that if you're going to be an active and committed part of a book group, which is what to me makes it really successful, you have to buy in and read books that you normally wouldn't choose for yourself. And here's another thing that I think is really important. And I'll say something, and you keep commenting here. I think it's really important that when you come to the book club that you finished the book and that you've read it or are going to fake it really well. Only once have I never not finished a book. And I was going to fake it, but I was discovered. And another person on our staff said, oh, we shame those people who have finished the book. And for some book clubs, that's completely acceptable. I just want to say there's many varieties on the spectrum of book clubs. Vicki and I certainly have our opinions and you can have yours, but I would say that's really important. I think it goes back to the first thing we were talking about, which is commitment. There's a commitment to your book group. There's a commitment to the other people in your group. And coming to a discussion unprepared or having not finished is just kind of, I don't know. I guess it's just like any relationship where you have kind of baseline expectations. And when they aren't met, then things just don't go so well. So, you know, and for instance, in our group, we meet every other month. And so the expectation that you could finish a book in a month, even with all your other reading that you're doing for whatever is pretty realistic. I mean, unless the book is enormously long, but I just think that it's sort of a contract and sort of a commitment you have to the other people in your group. Yes. So if you're leading a one-time book group, these rules and things we're talking about may not apply. I think, again, we're talking about a long-term continuing to meet at regular interval book group. So if you're just leading a one-time discussion, hopefully some of these things will translate as well. I think we all read a book differently. So when we come to a discussion. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. Shoot. Okay. Forgive me. I haven't... Here we are. We all read a book differently than... So Vicki and I are going to read a book. We're going to read the same book, but we're going to have a very different experience. And you had a great story to tell about that that really brings that home. Yeah, this is a great story. When we first started One Book, One Link, and I was a discussion leader and I still continue to do that. And we had a downtown book discussion on the book Plain Song. And there were about 12 or 15 business people there, a good mix of men and women. And when we got to talking about the book, there were a lot of differences of opinion. But one of the women said, you know, I think this book is about how horrible it is to live in a small town. You know, there's no support. There's no mental health things. Everyone knows your business. It's just a horrible thing. And then this man chimed in and he said, well, I think this book is really about how supportive and wonderful small towns are. And how everybody looks out for each other. And then I think that was my first realization in all my years of being a librarian and a book discussion leader. That really people bring so much of their own emotional things to our book. And you cannot know what that's going to be. I always thought people were all reading the same book. And then I realized, no, we're really not. And so that's a great thing to keep in mind when you're in a book group, because you can be really baffled by people's reactions to books sometimes. And that kind of explains where some of those things come from. When we read the book, Dewey, the library cat from my book club, my own personal cat was in the last month of his life. And I was just in anguish. But nobody else was going through that at the time. So that's what I brought to that book at that time. It was timing. Exactly. It's timing because we've all had an experience where we've tried to read a book and it just doesn't resonate with us. And then we pick it up four years later and say, oh my God, what a great book. It's like eating pumpkin pie in spring or watermelon in Christmas. Just wrong. Exactly. I also want to talk about the chemistry of a book group can certainly affect a discussion. So while we're going to give you tips and tricks, the chemistry of the people involved is ever changing. It's delicate. It is. And I don't, I can't really stress that enough, but in a movie you can tell if actors have chemistry or if they don't. Right. And the same is true for a group of people who were sitting around a table or chemistry can really help or can really stink things up. So you as a discussion leader need to keep that in mind as well. And I think we, we had some issues with this and some of our, with our book groups with the, with children too, where we had, and there were parent-child groups where we had a parent that kind of dominated or a child that kind of dominated or someone who would never talk. And we sort of talked about tips to, as a discussion leader, to kind of mediate that problem. In other words, calling directly on the quiet child, asking him or her a direct question and saying things to the parent. Like, well, let's, let's see what other people have to say about this or it's obvious that you have a strong opinion, but maybe others feel differently. And so we worked a lot on that in our book discussion training. Before we go into our tips and tricks, I want to remind you on the library commission webpage, we have a book club kit page. We have over 800 titles of multiple copies of books that you can borrow from us. We link to other libraries who generously will share their book clubs with us. And when you search our site, if we don't have it, the other libraries that do will appear with their contact information. So this is more than just searching our library. It's various libraries. This is a really easy way to get a hold of multiple copies of books. If that's a problem for your group, this makes it easy. One more thing, there are generic questions here. Generic questions for fiction, generic questions for nonfiction. And if you were to look at them and you were actually going to use them, I think you would give yourself away pretty quickly as someone who hadn't read the book, if you were a leader. But these are here to help and they may augment some things that you want to discuss. So for fiction and nonfiction, you've got some options here. And I can't go back. Okay. So I'll point those out to you. But then I also want to point out that our session today, book group discussions, tips and tricks, this is what we're going to go through today. So you don't need to write these down. This is on our webpage. So we're going to go through these. And Vicki and I both came up with this list. And so we'll just start off with number one. And I don't know that this is just common sense or we need to stress the obvious, but if you're asked to be a book club leader, really the hard work falls on the leader, I think. So know that going in. I liken it to the woman, the man, the person who hosts Thanksgiving. You're going to have to come up with the recipes. You're going to have to shop. You're going to make the food and they're going to eat it up in about 20 minutes. The preparation time versus the time that you're eating, think of that in terms of your book club. You really are doing a lot of the prep work. You're reading the book. You're thinking about it. You're reading it differently. So think about it that way. If you're asked to be a book discussion leader. And so in my book club, Vicki is the only other person who will sub for me for being a club leader. The others do not want to do it. And they say so. So that is my responsibility. And I've learned a lot thinking about these tips and tricks today. What else do you want to say about that? Well, I was in a book group where we sort of traded off. Whoever chose the book then led the book discussion and they were responsible for doing the background research and coming up with discussion questions. And it was pretty spotty because people vary so much in that. Like you said, some people really don't like to do it. So I think if you have somebody who likes to lead and is comfortable in that role, you should let them do it and not be so democratic and say, no, everybody has to do it. Just because it doesn't always work so well. And so that's, you know, I think that that people have different talents for that and they have different different ways that they do it. So I would say if you have a few people in your group who are natural book leaders or have some training in it or are more interested in it to go ahead and let them go for it. And I think let me distinguish. It's different from choosing the book. Right. I think it's important, my opinion, to make everybody take turns picking the book. But leading the book is a different thing entirely. It might be unfair to expect the person who picked the book to lead the book. While you're reading the book, and I know when I've been doing this for a while, I'll keep post-it notes handy or a notepad handy. If you're reading electronically, if you're reading, if you're listening in any way that you can note particular passages, descriptions, things that really stick out to you and take notes on that. That's one way to help prompt the questions or the comments that you want your other readers to discuss. Do you do that also? Yeah, I definitely read my book group books differently. I tend to look for things that I think are discussion worthy. I also tend to write down questions and things I didn't understand or I thought were unclear and things like that. I definitely read my book group book with a pen in hand. It does maybe feel like your English classroom college perhaps. And maybe it might take the joy out of it. Sometimes I'll read a book twice for a book club. Yeah, listen to it and read it. That will also give you a very different perspective. So remember the preparation time for you as the leader is going to be longer. And if that's not your cup of tea, then say no. So then I would say then look at your notes when you have finished the book. And really I do in a format write questions down with number one, number two, number three. I used to feel that that was a bit of a prop and I didn't like to do that. I loved if it was just a little more organic. But sometimes that's not really reliable and it can flop. Right. Do you prepare questions? Yes, I do. And also not just questions, but sometimes I'll just pick out things that are more like observations or comments or even a passage sometimes and say, you know, when you read this passage, what did this make you think of or that kind of thing. So it's not always questions and answering questions, but also just talking about the structure of the book and things like that that can prompt some good discussion. Okay, I'm going back to my PowerPoint. Remembering these things are just pretty much cut and paste from this web page. When we started discussion, I always asked the person who picked the book to remind us, why did you pick this? What was your intention? And that can, we had, I realized I had a follow up question from our discussion that I didn't ask. Our book club member picked the book because he won the Nobel Prize for some of his writing, not particularly for that book, but she said I wanted to know what Nobel Prize writing was like. Right. And I didn't ask, so what is Nobel Prize writing like? And after I went to bed that night, I thought that was such an obvious closer. Right. And I missed it. Right. And you know, we get all gamut of answer to that. It might be, you know, sometimes it's like, I read this book and I totally wanted somebody to talk to about it. I mean, we've all had that experience, like see this movie, read that book, because you want to talk to someone about it. We've had that kind of answer. You know, other times it's been like, well, I had, you know, two days and I went to the library and looked on the new book list, or I knew there were a lot of copies of the book, or I'd heard buzz about it, or, you know, I mean, there's a lot of different reasons that people choose the books they do. But it's a great, it is a great starter question. Yeah. Definitely. Another thing, and I didn't put this on my list, when I go around the room, I will ask, when did you finish the book? Right. And this isn't on here. I forgot that. But that way, there's always someone who just finished last night, or perhaps that morning. Or two months ago, and you've forgotten a lot of it. Yeah. And that really helps you, if you're asking a question of someone you can say, you just finished, what was that character's name, can you remind us about what happened here? Right. Because we do all finish it different times, especially at the interval at which we meet, which is every other month. Right. So that's another good thing to do. I suppose that outs people who haven't read the book. Yeah. Totally, yeah. Or they'll lie. Or they just finished it that morning before they came. Yeah. I have, for this last time, I read a lot of book reviews. You can find sometimes professional book reviews really easily online. Amazon will link to Publishers Weekly Choice, Voya, lots of book review sources. And then I sometimes really enjoy the starred readers. Right. Folks like you and I who are able to write in reviews. And they might say, I've read every book by this author. This one was very different. Right. And that might prompt you to say, well, other readers are saying that this book particularly stands out. Why? That could be a question that you've garnered just from those reviews. Yeah. One person's article that I read said that she didn't like to focus on those very much. I really like to. Do you do that? Oh, yeah. I love professional reviews because I just, I mean, first of all, you learn so much about them. Because professional reviews aren't always, I like this book. I didn't like this book. A lot of times they give background. Mm-hmm. You know, especially like the New York Times will choose someone that knows about, for instance, we just read a book that takes place in Turkey. You know, we don't all know the history. And the New York Times is going to choose someone who knows something about or knows something about the author or whatever. And so you can gain all kinds of insight from personal reviews. I'm not such a big reader of customer reviews because I think that I'm so, I'm so used to reading professional reviews and I sort of have a standard for it. And sometimes when I read customer reviews, they can be very good, but they can also be like, this book sucked. I didn't like it. It was boring. You know, and I was like, oh, yeah. Now the Amazon reviews usually are a little more. Yeah. I know. I know. And sometimes you're not going to find professional reviews in a book. Right. So I mentioned that as an option. And sometimes Lonnie Van Amazon has reviews. That's true. But if I'm struggling with the book, sometimes just knowing what other readers went through that experience of when I'm preparing to say, oh, they struggled too. Yeah. I think professional reviews are a great, really, really good source. So do try to find those. And I don't find those difficult to locate, but you could certainly call us at the reference desk if you wanted any help with that. In Nebraska access, we have access to books and print. And that will sometimes lead you to reviews as well. But Amazon, Barnes & Noble are pedestrian ways to get a hold of those. Good reads. Yeah. That'll help you. That really is a nice summation of what other readers thought will help you get your thoughts together. So then I tried to research the author. And sometimes there's a lot out there. And sometimes you're going to find a Wikipedia measly paragraph. So you may have to do a little digging to find that. And again, there was another person who said she didn't like to share too much about the author because it would lead people. But I find that it really helps explain the author's point of view, their education, their family life. Yeah. I think so too. Now, the unfortunate thing is that if you ask any author and, you know, you are pointing out biographical similarities to their, say, work of fiction, they will vehemently deny, almost in any case, that their work of fiction has anything to do with their personal life, no matter how obvious it is, which I think is just a really funny quality in authors sometimes that they do that. But I find the personal backstory fascinating. For instance, this author from Turkey, what we found out about him, he had trained as an architect. And, you know, that just was an interesting part. And I think that a lot of the personal things we learn about authors really do contribute to the discussion. I mean, it's all speculation because we don't have the author sitting there, except in a few cases. Well, and that might be worth discussing. Yeah. But yeah, I think it adds interest and fullness to a discussion. That might be a great segue to twice in our book group. We have had the author with us. Right. Which has its own... One of our book club members is an author and has written nonfiction books and then did a foray into a fiction romance. And so we plugged in an additional time to read that for Valentine's Day. And so we were able to ask the writer, why did you do this? Why did you... Boy, those are self-built in question. Right. Why did you make the plot go this way? Right. This didn't seem in character at all with that person. Exactly. And there were many things I had trouble with in that book. The challenge was to be diplomatic. Exactly. And not be critical, but to be curious instead of critical. Exactly. How did you prepare yourself for that night when we discussed... Well, I focused a lot on the characters and the character development and just exactly what you said, the questions about why things happened the way they did, why he wrote it the way he did, and not the overall questions of quality. Is this the best book I ever read or whatever? Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about. The beginning of this is that you have this relationship, you have this sort of respect for each other and these kind of unspoken rules about how you comport yourself in that situation. And so I didn't ever have any worry that it was going to be bad or uncomfortable. You worry about everything. But I mean, it's such a respectful group. And all of the relationships are very strong and intact in that group. And that makes a big difference. And you know, no one's going to go off the line. We had Ladette Randolph, who is a Nebraska author, join us. She's a friend of a friend of mine. And I knew that she was in town. And we were discussing her book Sandhills Ballad. Which was your choice. It was my choice. And that was really interesting, too, to have her there. And I think she was absolutely thrilled to think that 10 people had spent that much time and energy actually thinking about what she had written and wanting to talk to her about it. And I think she totally enjoyed the experience. And it meant a lot to her. So that was fun. It was just a different way of doing book discussion. But it's a fun thing to do once in a while. I wouldn't want the author to be there. But in those two circumstances, very specifically, the chemistry was quite different. And in that book, I didn't really like any of the characters. I didn't enjoy any of them. And there she was. She who had created them. Exactly. I didn't like anybody who created them. But you can't say that. No, no, no. I think that would be the wrong thing to say. I struggled with this character and the choices he made. Right. And not all characters have to be likeable to be compelling. So I don't know if she was set out to write a book where we were supposed to champion somebody or dislike somebody. I think it was just sort of a book about the way people's lives fall apart and how they try to put them back together again. Some people would say that's a very book club kind of book. Yeah, it was. I thought there was a lot to talk about. So researching the author, number six, number seven, we're sort of segueing to discussing characters of the book, asking members to comment on them. Sometimes you can just go, a discussion will lay itself out. You'll say, let's talk about the father. Let's talk about the mother. Right. Let's talk about the children. And you've got a half an hour, right? They are just talking about this. And I'm certainly not trying to say that the length of a discussion denotes the success of a club. Right. That's not my point. Sometimes you've just got a lunch hour. Sometimes you guys are meeting later after work. Right. And you can go on and on. Right. So please don't think in any way that the length of your discussion means success or not success. I shouldn't say that. You want to say anything more about characters and that can be hard in nonfiction. Yes. Yes, of course. Yeah. The characters, of course, are important. And we'll talk about this in a little bit about kind of what people read for. And some people do read for characters. This came up in our last book group. A lot of people feel they need somebody they can be sympathetic with. And if everyone in the book is just a horrible person, they have a very hard time with that book. And that's a person I would say that reads for character. And so if you have people like that in your group and you've got a book, you know, it's going to be hard for them to see beyond that into other qualities of the book. And you just have to understand that there's other people who that doesn't matter to them at all. So this is what you find out when you're in a book group. Right. It's sort of a Myers-Briggs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Discussing the setting of a book and the location, the time in which it takes place. For example, I had just read Shadow of the Wind, which was one book, one Lincoln Contender. And I so needed someone to talk to about that because it was kind of a gothic mystery. And I really needed to discuss that with someone. So when a co-worker finished, I went running over there because setting and location that's out of my zone, sometimes I really do need to discuss. And I love setting. I love reading for setting. Well, and I think the other thing that comes in with setting, a lot of times it's kind of historical impact. So if you're reading a book that took place during the Second World War or the turn of the century and you're thinking about it with current sensibilities, you're just not going to get it. I mean, I think that that's really important. And sometimes I've read historical novels where the characters have that kind of modern sensibility and you're thinking, no, really, if you were born and raised at the turn of the century, you can have these feminist ideas, but it's not going to be full blown like it is if you live post-1960s or 80s or whatever. So that's always something. I think that's an authenticity thing, too, about setting. That's always interesting to discuss. Does the person really seem like they're of that time or of that setting? And also, there's tons to learn about books that take place in other countries and other times because especially when we were doing some background research about the book that we just read that took place in Turkey and there were a series of revolutions that happened in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And so, who knew about that? I mean, we were pretty sheltered from that whole story and found out more about it from reading that book, which was really one of the great things about reading. Two books that come to mind for setting and location and time, Destiny of the Republic and River of Doubt, two terrific non-shin books. Am I still on eight? Yeah, eight. Okay, very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good. Okay, so I mentioned that as non-fiction books that read like fiction that are really, if your book group wants to branch out, those can really yield great discussion for that area. Number nine, major themes of the book. Sometimes that's easier than others to pluck those out. So this is a buffet of options for you to pick from in terms of getting ready for your discussion. Some themes really are quite obvious, though. I don't know if you want to comment more on that. I think also that's another one where the reader has a huge influence on what the themes of the book are. I mean, you can read what the author says, of course, and you should probably trust the author. But really, people read so differently. This is actually a good one if you're going to start your discussion, and this is what we do when we do parent-child book groups by having each person give something that they want to talk about, whether it's a theme or a character or an idea or they have a question or whatever. This is a good question to ask in that kind of a setting because we tend to like in the parent-child book groups to kind of go around in a circle and say, okay, everybody contributes something at the beginning of the discussion, and then the discussion leader will write that down. So we'll be sure to touch on all of those things in the course of the book discussion. And a lot of people want to talk about the themes. We put this one down. Why do you think the author wrote the book? I'm not sure I've ever really brought that up, but it might be relevant to some particular books. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, I read a couple of years ago. That had a very clear purpose. Fiction's a lot harder, although when you hear authors speak or you read interviews with authors, they often talk about things coming into their lives at a certain time, ideas percolating that then became something they just needed to get on the page. And there's all kinds of interesting takes on that. And you can often find that information on that. And sometimes not. And sometimes not. Yeah. So again, this is a buffet. Pick and choose from what might make your discussion work well. Vicki, you were just alluding to this. The Nancy Pearl. Yeah. Nancy Pearl, the woman, the Seattle librarian who came up with the one book, one town phenomena. And I heard her speak about this when she was at NLA several years ago. And it really did clarify kind of the Myers-Briggs book type. And she talks about what do you read for a story, character, setting or language? I think language is the least. That's the problem. And that's you. Yeah. That's one thing I really like. You do read the language. Some people just need the story to go, go, go, go, go and take them through it. Some people really want to fall in love with the characters. Right. For them to become friends. And those are the series readers. The ones that just can't wait for that next character book or the next character. Those are maybe series readers. Right. Which I'm really guilty of. Right. But you know the other thing about this too is that none of this is mutually exclusive. There are people that like to read for certain reasons, but can find a lot of enjoyment in a book that doesn't meet all those criteria. Right. So that's once again the difference between your leisure reading, your private secret reading. People always have that, you know. Or what you read when you're down or what you read when you're on vacation or what you read when you, you know. I mean there are people who have different reading tastes. So just because you happen to be a reader who really likes character, it doesn't need a beautiful poetic book and get something out of it. It just means that you tend to do that, to gravitate towards a certain kind of book. And I think when Nancy Pearl talks about a lot of these, she's talking about Reader's Advisory, which is trying to match the right person with the right book. And in a book group, you're not necessarily trying to do that. You're trying to expose and have a lot of different kinds of options for people. Get outside your comfort zone. Exactly. But in the discussion it's good to know that people are just saying, you know, I could not get into this book. And, you know, you're kind of like, yeah, you're the character reader and you, you know, and I can see where that comes from. So it helps us kind of understand where the other people in the discussion are coming from. There was a book we discussed called Tinkers. Yes. I can't recall the author right now. You and Dean lost it. I love that book, yes. But it was really atmospheric, kind of different from who the narrator was. Right. Most of us struggled. Right. And you and Dean were loving it. Yeah. All the way down the line. So in the discussion it helped to know, well, I really do read for character. I really need to have some strong, defined characters. Right. And you don't. Right. So that helped us. It doesn't make it right or wrong. It didn't make the discussion better or worse. Right. Right. So that's important to learn about and that's important to you in a book. And this book didn't have it. Or it did. Well, and the great thing about that too is that the other types of readers can open up new ways of seeing a book. And you might come away from the discussion with more appreciation, understanding. It doesn't mean you love the book suddenly. But I've actually come out of discussions in my other book group where the person said, I'm going to read that book again because I did not get all of this out of it. Right. And that's a really cool thing when that happens too. Right. So not that everybody wants to do that. But yeah, you have to be open. Right. I also liken it to maybe a dinner club. If Vicki and I, every Sunday, determined to go out for a different cuisine. We're going to eat French. We're going to eat Thai. We're going to eat Ethiopian. Are we both going to love it? Right. No. So think of this book club like a meal. That's quite different. The buffet once again. It's not meat and potatoes. It's all back to food. I know. I used to always do car analogies. So you're not all going to like it. That doesn't mean it's a bad book group. I sometimes feel when we hear comments from librarians, nobody finished it. Nobody liked it. But really the discussion is the key. Right. This session today is how to salvage that. How to make lemonade out of some lemons perhaps that you'll work with. And we maybe should have mentioned this at the beginning. I don't know if it's going to come up but so many people start a book group by saying, did you like the book? Or did you not like the book? Oh, yes. And I really, really, really discourage that because that is just shut down mode at that point. If someone says, no, I don't like it, then, you know, and liking it or not liking the book is almost immaterial in my opinion. Except no consequence. So if you're going to start your book group like that, you're going to have a problem. And I just want to convey something that I learned from being on a mock Caldecott committee. When they're discussing those books, they absolutely forbid people to make negative comments immediately. Those have to be saved for the end. So only positive things can be said about the book until everybody has gotten their positives out and then the negatives can be raised. And we kind of went by that in my other book group also. And it was really good because I got down to discussion and another person sitting there saying I feel kind of awkward now saying that I thought that was a good book when everybody is trashing it. And so that the mix of negative and positive, it's not like you can't say it, but you don't want to start your book group on a negative tone and you don't really want to bring the whole issue of like, dislike up at the very beginning. Maybe at the end you can kind of, people can be kind of cute and talk and go very far. That came from, and I forgot to mention this in the second point, when you're coming up with your questions, don't make them yes or no questions. Make them open-ended and don't ask who likes the book. That's pretty traditional in a lot of articles that I've read to not do that. I know book groups that do. So if that works for you, great. Vicki and I are looking for long discussion. Okay. We mentioned point number 12. When did you finish the book? Maybe it was two months ago. Sometimes handouts might help. I never do that. But for some books, maybe a list of characters or a setting or for us, the setting of turkey, we talked a little bit about the three revolutions that took place in the 60s, 70s and 80s. We needed to remind ourselves of that and how it fit in with the setting of the book. It may be helpful. It may be a lot of work and you may think I don't want to do that. It could be if the character's names are odd or hard to pronounce. I think most of us had a little sheet where we wrote down the character's names because they weren't names that were familiar to us. Remembering what was that character's name. Another thing that's helpful is that the character's name is the character's name. I don't know if that city was, but it would have been interesting to see that. Any background history about the area. Photographs, anything that you can find to add to the discussion could be a really good thing. When we read a book about the share crop, Mary coin, which was based on the iconic photo taken at the time. I don't know if that helped, but it helped me remember who we were talking about. I think that's helpful. Sometimes your book may have a movie component. It's important to let you know that we do have some DVDs in our book club kits. Some of them come with a movie. Once in my book club we did a movie combo. We read the book, came together, and most of us would say the book is better. Sometimes the movie really does. I think in fried green tomatoes. That can be great. If you want to shake things up, maybe in the summertime, or sometime in the little lighter, do something like that. That actually works really well with teams. If you have a team book group, the whole movie book thing is great. It makes better discussion. When you are creating the pictures in your head of the book, especially if you really love the book and see the movie, it's easier to contrast it. If you see the movie and get all the visual input created by the director and try to decompose that back into the book. Teenagers love that because movies are such a natural medium that they are very familiar with. If you have kids who really like to see the movie, they can feel so strongly about that book and the characters that when the movie is made, they can have a lot of things to talk about. Yeah. This is easy for me. Number 14, always let others answer the questions first. You are moderating, you are tossing out these questions. I oftentimes have an answer burning in me. Please be quiet when you are the leader. This is the answer. You don't want to come off as though you are leading it in a certain way. Oftentimes their answer is to kick you off in another direction. That's fine. I love that. I love it when it goes in its own direction and it leads itself. It doesn't always do that, but it can. How important is that with kids? It's important with kids very much because especially if there are other people saying something, they will tend to nod their head and agree and feel like they don't have anything to say. We tend to tell the adults to be quiet and let the kids talk first. That tends to work really well. This gets to another point and I'm not sure if we have this on our PowerPoint about discussing from comments that people made instead of just waiting. That's our next point. Number 15, which is our next point. This is something that I think is hard for people to do and this is partly because of how conversations take place a lot of times. Instead of listening for what somebody is saying and responding to what they just said, people are waiting for their turn to say what they want to say. In a book group especially, you really need to focus on that because the person that is speaking, no matter what kind of comment or observation they're making about the book, if you can speak back to that, then that really is good for discussion because otherwise it's people just saying one thing after another and not really responding to each other's comments and feelings. It's a training thing too and it's also something that you can practice in a book group that you maybe don't practice in your normal life. We should all practice this in our normal life obviously. But it does make for a better discussion I think if you listen to what other people have to say and then you ask for further clarification, you comment on the comment instead of just moving on to what it is that you want to say. Sometimes in a book group you'll see someone just antsy to answer and then you've moved past it and you'll say, it looked like you had something you really wanted to say and we're past it. That's the key of a good moderator is to look up on that kind of body language and that kind of looking at people in the group and seeing they're waiting their turn and this is a big difference between between introverted people and extroverted people and you will have a mix in your group and the introverted people will tend to be polite and wait and anticipate is there going to be a period at the end of the sentence and then will it be my turn to talk? Extroverted people don't tend to do that so much and this really comes into play with parent-child book groups and moderators and we teach them to look at the body language. Like you said, there's the squirming there's the you know and some people do give up really easily and so if you notice that you definitely want to give them a chance to jump in. You mentioned number 16 going around the room and asking every book club member what they may want to talk about a character or a theme and that puts the onus on them and not on you. That can be a great way to generate some discussions especially if you're feeling pretty weak about leading the discussion. One of the reasons we do that too is because we want to talk about the things the group wants to talk about not the things we want to talk about. When we started to train our leaders to do this we had better discussions because we had our slate of questions that we wanted to ask about the book and then it turned out that the people in the group had different ideas and things that they wanted to talk about so it kind of customizes the book discussion. It's like any interviewer on a talk show you can tell if they're just reading their questions. That shouldn't be your mode. You should be prepared to trash your questions if it's really going and let it go. Exactly. I think your questions are there as a backup. You should have a bowl. It is very helpful. The title of the book can be riveting in terms of why did they name it that what were they thinking. A lot of thought goes into that certainly with the editor and the publisher and all of that discussion. What did it mean and what were they talking about? I love to talk about that sometimes when you'll read interviews with authors they'll say I really wanted it to be called this and my editor said no it's going to be called this. It could be because there was another book with a similar title or they thought it was misleading and just like the book cover issue it's often out of the author's control what the book is called. That contributes hugely to the appeal of the book too. Whether or not somebody picks it up or reads it or doesn't read it there's a I'm not going to be able to remember the title of it now because it's such a strange title but it's like super sad true there's a super sad true love story and I read that book seriously because of the title. I didn't read a review of it it just grabbed me and I enjoyed it a lot but a title and a cover are really big in selling books and so I think that it's just an interesting thing. In the whole Harry Potter phenomenon I remember they were different covers for the US different titles for the US different covers for the UK Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Harry Potter and the Sorcerers different artists different narrators at some point I thought why how are we so very different yeah that is interesting yeah that was worth a lot of discussion at one point as we're getting ready to wrap up here wrapping up your conversation in the book group again I would never say so who liked the book did you enjoy it did you have a good time I always say would you recommend this book to any of your friends who would you recommend it to or also was the ending satisfying to you if it wasn't how would you rewrite it in Belcanto really strange ending and we spent a whole maybe half an hour rewriting me and all of us how would I have done it I think that can be really great a great question it can take you a lot of places let's see yeah you're going to struggle as the leader I think you are in the most dubious position if you decide to be a book club leader you're doing the heavy lifting right you're going to do a lot of the work you're also in control for me that's really important you're going to make it go and you could make it flop but we've had to discuss some really books books that were just awful in my opinion that I would have never read that I didn't enjoy in the slightest but aren't there always isn't there always one person that likes it one the person who picked it I should hope but when we all come together and then have I think this may be the wrong word but it's a communion then it's not with food but it's with the discussion that we all bring then what we experience from the book again it's not success to say oh we all walked away and it was two thumbs up for us all that's not what it's about well there's the nature of just being a good sport too there's a huge part of the book group it's that very thing and like I said if you all have this understanding going in it goes so much smoother that the expectation is not that everyone's going to like every book and it's all going to be happy and you know so I think that those I think having the correct expectations makes for a good group and if the discussion leader is reasonably prepared and thoughtful which you always are even if we're discussing a bad book quote unquote that nobody really likes or people didn't take to it still comes out and it's interesting right right I think that is the goal so yes I've read books in my book club that I waste of time for me but it was about the discussion and so I think that's what makes this session worthwhile you said I'm going to belong to a book group I'm going to commit I'm going to read I'm going to finish let's make let's put the cherry on top of what was not a great exactly great ice cream Sunday another food analogy yes and make it good and finish it up and say well that wasn't so bad right and and you know I guess I disagree with you a little bit when you say you know reading a book some books were a waste of time because I think well I just think that it's important to know sort of the breadth and depth of literature especially as librarians because we can read our corner of the universe which is what we like to read but it's very important for us to always know that there are other kinds of books and other kinds of readers and other kinds of writers that are completely different experiences whether it's our experience or not it isn't relevant because I never feel like I wasted time reading a book you didn't come that night though I'm thinking thinking you maybe just were I might have felt differently clearly we have lots of opinions about this Vicki and I have been at this for a while we really are not right or wrong it's these are tips and tricks that are going to get our link from our web page on the book club kit page if you want to continue talking to one of us or something we said challenge you please contact one of us there's our emails and our telephone numbers and say I'm struggling with this book group how could I what do you suggest or I want to start one what do you think so we hope you really have great discussions even though you have to read books you don't like or that are not going to be your number one love and use the internet widely I was talking with a woman yesterday who's starting a parent child group at a school and she had a list of books she wanted to read and she was concerned that there weren't that she didn't know how to start a discussion and I said oh you know just google the name of the book and you know and teacher teacher resources or something and someone somewhere has come with those things you know I should also mention in our book discussion book club kit with page just a minute we often will provide those for you so for example you're reading about booking solver discussion questions discussion questions discussion questions so you're going to start out with some already and the reason also this session came up was there are times when there are books that your group will choose that don't have these handy discussion questions so if you choose something here I always do try to find them if they're not there believe me I couldn't find them so but some books these days children and adult books come with discussion questions in the back right I just added a book where I put that in there I'm not going to be able to remember the name of it now but I'll note that in the book right in that citation so just to put a little plug in for Lincoln City libraries on our book guide we have a list of book groups in Lincoln that meet regularly ones that we know about but we also have all kinds of resources in there for book groups to use you know to help their discussions we have a newsletter that's actually called book club choices that you can subscribe to that will come into your mailbox once a month and say here's some good books that are good for bookers so if I'm a librarian not in Lincoln I could subscribe to that okay one more thing here that we talked about I also include links for authors too when I have author information so one of those things now it's not working you will have a link to authors we will also have a link if you need different formats so this link will take you to information about Barbara King solver so a lot of your homework's been done right how nice nice when someone does your time saver for you so there's another advantage of using our book club kids we're at 11 o'clock so we will say goodbye but please continue to communicate with us if you would like to do so we would be pleased to hear from you and and don't be discouraged if people walk away from your book group and say oh my gosh please don't choose another book like that it meant that they challenged them and you had a great discussion and you didn't fail I think that's really what I want to overwhelmingly say to librarians who I've heard from really recently it wasn't a failure it wasn't a meal you particularly enjoyed but you had it together and you survived and now you move on to the next exactly and there hopefully the next one will be different yeah so surely it will be keep up the good work with your book clubs be in touch with us and thank you all right great does anybody have any questions nobody really had anything throughout the show which is fine but once you're a lot of questions that you put up here and I have the slides so those are posted when the recording is put up also links to our book club kit pages and your book the book I've linked to libraries you just added that to the list so all those links will be available for anyone who wants to check in with them afterwards with the recording all right all right yes that will wrap us up for this morning's encompassed slide thank you very much Lisa and Vicki that was great I know we've done, you've said before, we've done other things about book club kits but not something like this about what do you do if you have nothing there's lots of good ideas, lots of things about our book clubs right so yes we are good to go for today the show has been recorded so it will be available later this afternoon I'll probably get it up and ready to go and that link will be provided off the book club kit page as well so if you're not remembering how to find it just hang around in the book club neighborhood of our website you'll find it all right so that will wrap it up for this morning I hope you join us actually in two weeks next week is the one week of the year that Encompass Live doesn't have a show next week is the Nebraska Library Association, the Nebraska School Library Association annual conference and we take off that week because we figure everyone's off to the conference we're doing other things and we're busy as well so next week there is no Encompass Live but after that we are back on schedule Michael Sowers will be coming usually as the last weekend of the week of the month but we bumped up to October 15th for his monthly tech talk and then we have theater groups and discussion about our one book one of Nebraska for this year once upon a town so I join us for those and if you are on Facebook Encompass Live does have a Facebook page so like us there and get announcements of when new shows are coming up when recordings are available I also put the reminder here from this morning where you can log in on the fly if you didn't pre-register for a show you can get a quick link right there to it so if you're big on Facebook do like us there too and then that we are we're good to go thank you very much bye