The Library has a facebook group: I Love NU Libraries! Joining is a great way to stay up to date on Library events, as well as show your support for the Library. Join and invite student and faculty friends to do the same. You can also see promotional videos, along with photos and recordings of past events. For the fall semester, were going to be looking to increase discussion about our program authors and their books, through the facebook group. Stay tuned!
Book Clubs
Summer Reading
With the new warm weather, and 70+ degree temperatures, I’ve been thinking about Summer Reading. Though April’s a little premature for summer, we’re going to add a Summer Reading Category to Snell Snippets. Bloggers can add their favorite summer reading picks. (Or bemoan summer reading assignments-The Odyssey is one that I’d put in that category!)
I like mysteries in general, and particularly classic, 19th century ones in the summer. In the past that’s included books like The Woman in White. This summer, I’m looking forward to reading The Mysteries of Udolpho and possibly Armadale. I also like the kind of beach reading that you can read in a day. One of my best friends keeps up a steady diet of Trollope and Eliot throughout the summer, but I’m not that disciplined! What are your favorite summer reads?
I also think that some authors and books lend themselves particularly well to summer. F. Scott Fitzgerald springs to mind – I brought Tender is the Night with me to the French Riviera, but I don’t think the synergy was quite what I hoped for. I’d also be interested in starting a book club, if people were interested in reading any of the same books over the summer.
Book Clubs
Even though I really love to read, I’ve never been part of a sustained, organized book club. One of my favorite elements of college was the discussion sections for my English classes. I enjoy thinking about aspects of a text, analyzing them, and also getting to hear what others thought. Of my friends who’ve been part of book clubs, the general consensus seems to be, that after the first meeting or so, no one usually ends up reading the book, and the get-togethers become more haphazard and purely social affairs (which can also be fun, but deviate from the original goal.)
I’ve thought about trying to start a book club at the library. Do you think that students would want to participate, or are they too entrenched in their own studies, to want to pick up additional reading? Do you think library staff, or other faculty and staff from the Northeastern community would be interested? And how narrow of a book club topic yields the best inquiry?