[Publib] book groups and selecting titles and men

[William Hegarty]

We have a "Guilty Conscience Book Group" that usually draws 8 to 12 people
of which a quarter to a third are men. We read books that you feel guilty
about not having read, maybe because you had pretended to have read it
although you had only seen the Masterpiece Theater version, or you had only
read the Cliff Notes in college.

Group members tell me, anonymously of course, which books they feel guilty
about not having read. I bring a selection of five or six of these books to
each monthly meeting and the group chooses the book for the next month. Many
people say that is the best part of the meeting. I think the fact that there
is no overriding theme, other than guilt, helps draw men as they don't feel
as though they will be trapped in a genre. For example, we read "And Quiet
Flows the Don" after the men in the meeting said, "Enough of these books
about feelings. We need a book about Cossacks and swords."

This can be hard on the facilitator, i.e. me, as he has to read what the
group selected no matter what. So far, in six years of monthly meetings, I
have only failed to finish, "Tale of Genji," "The Magic Mountain," and
"Martin Chuzzlewhit." If you are interested, here is a link,
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pNvH9QTkf7Lig-SRy_R3RNw&hl=en, to a
Google Docs spreadsheet of most of the books we've read.

Liam Hegarty

-- 
William Hegarty
Larchmont Public Library
121 Larchmont Ave.
Larchmont, NY 10538
(914) 834-2281
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