Book clubs seem to be the literary phenomenon of the modern age. I recently joined a new group myself, and being the obsessive type that I am, I promptly went to the library and took home everything on book clubs and reading material that I could find, which was four books: The Readers’ Choice: 200 Book Club Favorites, What to Read: The Essential Guide for Reading Group Members and Other Book Lovers, A Year of Reading: A Month-By-Month Guide to Classics and Crowd-Pleasers for You and Your Book Group, and The Reading Group Handbook: Everything You Need to Know, from Choosing Members to Leading Discussions.

Each book had its strengths and weaknesses. For example, Reading Group Handbook had a great deal of information on the details of starting and maintaining a book club, but its many lists of books were just titles only, no synopsis – a flaw in my view. On the other end of the spectrum is Readers’ Choice, which gives a short intro on the practicalities of running a book club, but its real strength is in the 200 in-depth descriptions of books that have been recommended by multiple book clubs. I got the most additions to my wish list from that book. What to Read was similar to RC – but with more books and less description. Her recommendations are grouped by category (e.g. ‘Questioning the Miraculous’ and ‘Other Lands, Other Voices’). I found this book also most useful as a reference for bulking up my wish list.

A Year of Reading is set up in the most pleasing manner, in my view, and could solely be used as a guide for a book club (at least for one year). I liked the way the authors categorized the books, their offering of different selections under the same theme, and the additional information they provided. They provided info how to organize and run a book club without coming across as too rigid or authoritarian. Overall, I think this was the best of the four.