Welcome to the Book Suggestion Section of Pages
Welcome to the books section of Pages Book Club. If you are wondering why this is a separate section from the main site let me tell you. Michelle runs the main site & I handle the recomendations & the rewards. So instead of both of us running around on the same database & tripping over one another, we just made two sections. Trust me, this was easier.
This section of the site will house the recommended books, the form that allows you to suggest books, the standing order of the rewards, & the rewards themselves. So while the main site is where everything always happens, you do need to check here every so often. As I will be adding new books & you will need to make your recommendations for the books.
If you will notice I have changed the way this section is run. You will see three sections underneath this one. The first two are the books that have been recommended for Pages Book Club. The last section is the books that have been recommended but were denied for some reason. They may be wonderful books, but they may just be simply too long for the members or Michelle & I couldn't find discussion questions for them. Simple reasons for the denial, but they were recommended & so I felt they needed their own section. If you click on the "Read More" link you will be taken to a page that will give you the full synopsis of the book & who recommended it. The books will remain in this section until they have been chosen for the Club to read at which time they will be removed.
Book Recommendation Guidelines
We love all recommendations & want to give everyone free will, but there are a few things that we would like for you to remember before you fill out the form, ok?
- If you're recommending a book that is in a series, please recommend the first book. I understand that your favorite may be further in the series, but the Club is not going to read the series out of order. On that same note, we will only be reading one book, per series.
- Please keep in mind that people read at different paces, so a 2,000 page book recommendation probably won't be chosen. Since lives are busy & interest can falter...so on. Try to keep the books under 500 pages if possible.
- Discussion questions are, 90% of the time, stolen from the reading group guides in the back of each book (that is what they are there for :P). In some cases, we might be able to fish some from the Internet. In the case of a book that doesn't have ready-made discussion questions, picking that book will depend on how easily I can make some up without having read the book. If you suggest a book you have read/enjoyed & want to send some possible discussions along with it, please do! *There is a entry spot on the form for them* I don't want to deny a book just because I can't think of any preemptive questions, but keep it in mind if you are recommending something that doesn't have an edition with questions in the back. (This is especially true now that I am preposting questions when books are announced.)
- RE: #1, when I say we are only going to read on book per series, I don't mean we will only read one book per author. However, in the interest of giving everyone/every author a chance, we likely won't be reading several books by the same author within a few months. We've read two Neil Gaiman books, for example, but two years apart. The likelihood of another Gaiman book is low. Feel fee to recommend tons by one author, but only one will be chosen in the next two years. Also remember that the books you recommend are never removed from the choices until they are either denied or chosen.
Keep these in mind when you realize that it's been two years since you suggested Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (great book I hear, but it's 973 pages) and we still haven't picked it. ;) I would love for members to be able to come to this list and find something to read when they need something new, so we will list everything that gets sent in whether or not they adhere to these "guidelines." These are just some reasons why we don't select certain books. :)
