Tag Archives: reading

World Book Day

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There seems to be a day for everything–ice cream, pickles, beer–you name it and you can celebrate it.

Today is World Book Day. As an avid reader and a painstaking writer, this is my kind of day.

This special day for books has me thinking about an event I attended earlier this week. A local book club chose my recent Angels of the Underground as their April book, and invited me to the meeting to talk about the book. This club has been active since the 1930s, and its members are serious about their love of books. (Its business meetings are convened with the sharp rap of a gavel.) The members prefer to read nonfiction and especially like books that deal with women’s issues. We all had a wonderful conversation about Angels that stretched beyond my presentation into the cheesecake-and-coffee social time.

A couple of days later, the book club sent a lovely flower arrangement as a thank you. Seems like I should have been the one to send the flowers!

book club flowers

How to Find Good Books

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Much of my life is focused on reading and writing. I’m always reading two or three books at a time, usually one that I’m reviewing and a couple others for leisure. Then there are the ones I read for my own research and for preparing lectures. Books, books, books.

... embroidery Cute book shelf ...(Painting by Jorge Cruz)

How can you find books that you might like? One way is to look on one of the big book websites like Amazon. If you plug in a title or a subject, Amazon will make recommendations.

You can ask a librarian. Some of them, like Becky Spratford, are specially training to give readers advice.

You can read book industry publications. Publishers Weekly includes a Books of the Week feature that highlights a variety of genres.

You can follow editors, publishers, and writers at online places like Facebook and Twitter. There you can specifically tailor your followings to your reading interests. For those of you who like to read about early American history, for instance, there is a gold mine of reading suggestions in The Junto’s version of March Madness.

So fill your bookshelves. There’s lots to choose from.