More than one librarian has had to take over a library’s book discussion group on top of a thousand other duties. If you are pressed for time, it can be hard to plan and execute a good book discussion meeting. The resources listed below tell you where to find ready-made questions for book discussion groups on the internet so that you can be prepared for your next book discussion group.

Today’s How-To-Do-It Tip comes from Running Book Discussion Groups: A How-To-Do-It Manual by Lauren Zina John.

Ready-Made Questions
There are a number of sources for read-made questions that can be used in book discussions. Commercial and academic book publishers, bookstores, libraries, online book clubs, and even fee-based discussion group consultants are now posting free lists of discussion questions on the Internet. Some publishers, especially paperback publishers, insert discussion questions at the back of their books. Literature professors often post their class questions and syllabi on the Internet.

Although you’ll find more material on current best-sellers and well-studied classics, the Web can yield plentiful material on more obscure books too. Here are some resources for finding good book group questions online, starting with the easiest (and cheapest) places to find ready-made questions. (…)

• Google (www.google.com). A Google search is a “quick and dirty” way to find book group questions. Simlpy combine the title of your book with the phrase “book group” or “book discussion.” A Google search for “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “book discussion” (conducted in March 2005) yielded questions from sites including the Random House Reader’s Guide, The Multnomah County Library Homework Center, and the State of Vermont Department of Libraries, which also offered a book discussion kit.
•Amazon (www.amazon.com). Some of the publishers that sell books on Amazon provide reader’s guides and questions. To find discussion questions when they are included, search for the book by title and click on the title to get more information. At this point, a book information box will appear in the left-hand column. Generally, the box includes links to customer and editorial reviews, but if the publisher has also provided reading group guides and questions, you’ll find them here.
• The Book Report Network (www.tbrnetwork.com). This site is a portal that links to a growing number of Web sites that provide author interviews, reviews, and commentary — along with interactive elements such as polls, message boards, questions, and contests. The Book Report Network was founded in 1996 and is physically based in New York City. One of the sites that it links to, ReadingGroupGuides.com, enables readers to search for guides that include discussion questions. Another Web site, AuthorYellowPages.com, is a searchable directory of author Web sites. Many of these author Web sites also provide links to discussion questions.

 

Figure 6.1

•The Internet Public Library Online Criticism Collection (www.ipl.org). The Internet Public Library was an online references service founded in 1995 as part of a graduate seminar at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Today the University of Michigan continues to support this site with funding from Sun Microsystems and Intel. The FAQ for the site describes it as “the first public library of and for the Internet community.” Among the many wonderful reference services offered here, you will find many resources for group leaders. The full text of many literary works is available here, including the complete works of Shakespeare, Aesop’s Fables, classic mythology, and American short stories and novels by writers including Mark Twain, Luisa May Alcott, and Willa Cather. The Online Literary Criticism Collection (www.ipl.org/div/litcrit) contains critical and biographical Web sites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, title, nationality, and literary period. The collection links readers to criticism of American, Canadian, European, Latin American, and Asian literature, in some cases going as far back as medieval and ancient times. Because this section is not updated regularly, it is a better source for classics and well-reviewed books that are at least ten years old rather than bestsellers. I have personally used the site to find comprehensive information on authors including Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, and Alice Munro. This is also a good place to find links to published interviews with contemporary authors. Figure 6.1 shows the portal pages for the online Literary Criticism Collection.
• SparkNotes (www.sparknotes.com). The “Literature Study Guides” section of this Web site, which includes guides to both contemporary and classic literature, is prepared by literature students but appreciated by a far wider audience. A question from the SparkNotes guide to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets asks,”What do the origins and parts of the names reveal about the characters? Consider the names of Lucius Malfoy, Albus Dumbledore, and Voledemort?” Here’s a question from the SparkNotes guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: “How does Humpert change over the course of the novel? How does his attitude toward Lolita change (if it changes), and what is Humpert’s attitude about Lolita and the whole affair when he writes this manuscript in his jail cell?

-Excerpted from  Running Book Discussion Groups: A How-To-Do-It Manual, pp. 85-89. © 2008 by Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Read more of Lauren John’s writing on her book discussion blog!

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