I use to belong to a book club which I enjoyed very much. Not only for the wine and cheese, but because the book suggestions of the other members were often ones that I would never have thought of choosing myself. We read biographies such as "Not about the Bike" about Lance Armstrong, winner of the Tour de France,"the Ancestor Game" by Alex Miller, "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks, to name a few. Well, for one reason or another the book club broke up in 2008 and last year I realised I missed the book suggestions of my book club friends and was reading the same old genres that I always had.
Then, I got an invitation from someone I knew in my voluntary work life to join the online book site, goodreads.com which allows you to keep track of the books you are reading, give them reviews when you finish them which are available to other users of the site, as well as groups you can join to discuss books online, much as we did in our book club. Initially, I was slow to take it up, but over the last few months I decided to start reading some of the reviews for the popular books of 2009. Wow, did that increase my "to-read" list. I'm now using the site quite actively to find interesting things to read and hopefully to feed back my thoughts on the books I've read for the benefit of others.
There are a few different "book social networking" sites to choose from including Shelfari, Booktagger, and LibraryThing. If you are like I was trying to find interesting books to read but finding it hard to find the time or a bookseller able to make these sort of recommendations (let's face it, well informed booksellers are a scarce commodity these days), then try one of these book sites. I am enjoying my reading so much more these days that I think I might have to ressurect a version of the book club - maybe a night to swap book suggestions along with some wine and cheese of course!
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