Thursday, September 14, 2006
Where to find book discussion questions
Week after next is our library’s discussion of My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Because I’m running the discussion, I went looking for questions.
Book discussion groups have become so popular over the last few years that it’s a lot easier to find pages with questions. When I was running book discussion groups in New York, I really had to struggle. I often had to make up my own questions (gasp!). These days, every time I do a book discussion I google book title and book discussion and get more hits that the time before.
This time, I found four sites that looked useful, three of which would probably be generally useful when looking for book discussion questions:
Readinggroupguides.com
Bookbrowse.com (questions were the same as readinggroupguides… I don’t know if that would be true for every title)
About.com (look under Entertainment>Bestsellers>Book Club Questions. The like takes you directly to that page).
The author’s own web site (jodipicoult.com, in this case)
You can find other information on those pages, too: synopsis, newsletters, sample chapters, even links to podcasts and newsgroups. Lots of ways to help you evaluate a book before you read it, of find out what other people think about the story you just read.
One of the websites alludes to the small danger of these pages though… they often allude to things that happen in the story. In the parlance of the internet, this is known as a “spoiler.” If you don’t like people telling what happens next in a book (I hate it!), don’t read one of these pages until you finish.
Book discussion groups have become so popular over the last few years that it’s a lot easier to find pages with questions. When I was running book discussion groups in New York, I really had to struggle. I often had to make up my own questions (gasp!). These days, every time I do a book discussion I google book title and book discussion and get more hits that the time before.
This time, I found four sites that looked useful, three of which would probably be generally useful when looking for book discussion questions:
Readinggroupguides.com
Bookbrowse.com (questions were the same as readinggroupguides… I don’t know if that would be true for every title)
About.com (look under Entertainment>Bestsellers>Book Club Questions. The like takes you directly to that page).
The author’s own web site (jodipicoult.com, in this case)
You can find other information on those pages, too: synopsis, newsletters, sample chapters, even links to podcasts and newsgroups. Lots of ways to help you evaluate a book before you read it, of find out what other people think about the story you just read.
One of the websites alludes to the small danger of these pages though… they often allude to things that happen in the story. In the parlance of the internet, this is known as a “spoiler.” If you don’t like people telling what happens next in a book (I hate it!), don’t read one of these pages until you finish.
