Books, Readers and Beyond #54 Social Networking Through Books Exercise Two

After viewing the resources above, what ideas come to mind for implementing a book club into your library. Post your thoughts and ideas onto your blog. Using one of the "live" book club resources, also look for a title that your book club could discuss.

At first I thought, If this is to be a new start-up I need something that will intrigue customers and draw them in, not yet knowing who the other members of the club would be, a potential customer would not come for the companionship and camaraderie of the other members of the club, although she or he might hope that this would be a place to meet and get to know some congenial companions. As the organizer it would certainly be important to me, because I know that this is what will sustain a group, and the lack of this is what often breaks groups apart.

So I went for the most tried and true principle of all library programming, if you feed them they will come, and decided to choose a book that could be tied in thematically with food, like the Octavia Field Branch’s “Read It & Eat It Book Club.” My first thought was Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray, a domestic comedy about a woman who starts a cake bakery out of her home after her husband is laid-off.

Then I though I should look for a more recent release, one that the library owns in multiple copies. I browsed through the ReadingGroupGuides for inspiration on new titles and found an interview with author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about her new book The Palace of Illusions and book groups. I know she must be an intelligent author because she also knew about the food-book nexus:

“I love book clubs. Unlike bookstore talks where you are introducing a new book to people unfamiliar with it, the members of a reading group have generally gone through a book carefully. Of course, this means you have to be prepared for in-depth questioning. ('The color red appears 41 times in this novel, but it doesn't always mean the same thing. What exactly did you want it to symbolize, and why?') But it also means they liked the book, otherwise they wouldn't have invited you. Plus there's usually food. Good food.”

However, when I discovered that the novel was based on the Mahābhārata, I forgot about food for the moment I was so intrigued by a more primary need, the need for a story, and I knew that you could not ask for a better story than the Mahābhārata, along with the Rāmāyana, it is to Indian Literature what the Iliad and the Odyssey are to Greek Literature, the epic foundation stories from which all the rest flow from, and ultimately are judged against. Plus, it is written from the woman’s point of view, Panchaali, the wife of the five heroic brothers of the story. And she was the wife of all five at the same time. You might look at this either as a woman’s secret fantasy or as her worst nightmare, but either way it’s a potential draw for women readers. (The branch could start a narrative history book club later if men are feeling left out.)

Another plus was that the library owned multiple copies and most of them were in on the shelf. Worried that this might indicate a slow read, I read through the First Chapter Excerpts on the catalog, and that quickly dismissed my fears. Not only was Divakaruni knowledgeable about the food-book nexus, but sentence one of the novel starts with a child eager to hear a story, the favorite for many children, where did I come from? Reading on, I discovered that the author teaches creative writing at the University of Houston, so she’s a local author, and her book has a readily available discussion guide, a good source of questions for the group facilitator should conversation start to flag, or wander completely off topic. So I decided to put Eat Cake back on the shelf as a suggestion for the second meeting of the club.

Now that I have the story, it’s time to get back to food, networking and publicity.

• First, try to recruit another member of the library staff who knows Indian culture and cookery and would be interested in helping out.
• Failing success at that the fall-back plan is the subject browse search in the catalog for Cookery, Indic.
• Next schedule space or meeting room.
• Then get the event on the events calendar.
• Schedule it far enough ahead to allow enough time for the publicity to get out.
• Open up Publisher and begin designing the flyer.
• Think how to distribute the flyer, next to a display of any copies of the volume in the branch.
• Oh yes, that means putting together a display with a color copy of the book jacket to hold place when all the copies are checked out. Surround them with Indian cookbooks and any copy of the Mahābhārata that’s available.
• Write press release and send it to the local press.
• Then take or mail them to the Houston Indian Associations.
• Talk up the program to your regular customers.
• Get a commitment from a few of them to attend.