I’ve been procrastinating for a while (almost four years, shockingly) on updating the lists of books that Jennifer and I have used for our book groups, but today I finally got around to this large project.
Sadly, the Excel spreadsheet that I use at the library for tracking the books we discuss in the book groups cannot be easily pasted into my blog; I learned my lesson about the incompatibility of Microsoft products and WordPress a few years ago when I lost my entire blog after pasting something from a Word document into a blog post. But today the library opened late due to the snowstorm, and then my boss and I agreed that perhaps it would be better if I and my broken foot stayed home today rather than try to negotiate the slickery snowiness from home to car and car to library – which meant that I had time to tackle this updating project. (And, yes, I have a broken foot. Four weeks on crutches, and now I have graduated to walking with a walking boot, which is both awkward and a bit slippery.)
As I added to the book lists, I was impressed by how many titles Jennifer and I have used with the groups over the years. Some of the books have been terrific for discussion, others have been terrible, and the majority have been adequate. If you have questions about any particular title and its success with book group discussion, please feel free to contact me about it, either here in the comments or by sending me an email (see my email address information in the “Comments” informational section in the blog header).
This is great, Abby. I wish I was still teaching. I used to run a 5-8 reading group (membership varied by the year, it seemed) and this would have been a stellar list to refer to when planning a year. That being said, I abhored prescribed reading guides (still do, as an adult) and felt that if I was going to “teach” a book, I darned well better be able to look at it intellectually and glean out good discussion topics. Glad to see you’re back here. I missed your postings, and am very sorry to hear about your foot! Welcome back, Abs! -L
Hi Liz,
I know what you mean – I don’t love reading guides, and I’m often suspicious of lists of books, too. But hopefully this list is one way to just show some books that someone has used for these grade levels. And definitely, some of the titles were lousy for group discussion…but that’s often a great learning experience for the kids in the groups, and can lead to awesome discussions about what makes a great book, and what makes a great book group book.
And yes, I’m finally back. Just felt uninspired for a few months, and didn’t want to post uninteresting, low quality posts. 🙂