What are creative themes for your next library book club meeting?

Many patrons who visit our public libraries are people who may not be able to travel. Due to finances, work commitments, age, or health, these "armchair travelers" may have a profound interest in other places. They simply cannot make the trip. Book discussions offer a great way to keep them engaged. Many years ago, public libraries often had travel films in movie or video format, allowing people to take "journeys" into different parts of the world. Book clubs can do this and more. The programs could be offered by a guest presenter familiar with the location, a librarian sharing their travel experiences, or someone who facilitates the conversation and allows participants who have traveled to share their memories as part of the event.

Time travel themes are especially popular in public libraries. With a large historical fiction collection and non-fiction works that offer factual context, you can create a variety of specialized themes. Some may focus on siginficant historical events (like the recent 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion during World War II), while others can take a broader theme (looking at perceptions of the American West) by novelists from earlier times and today. Sometimes, it's possible to show excerpts of movies to enhance conversations. When planning such programs, it's often helpful for the librarian or person facilitating the conversation to pull representative books from the collection that others may want to read beyond the book selected.

Mystery fiction has many sub-genres. Consider "cozy", "locked room", "police procedural", "amateur sleuth", or "hard boiled",

Reading festivals can take a variety of directions. If your library has an appropriate community room area, adding a few recipes to the table will certainly satisfy patrons' appertite for learning about food cultures in different areas of the world. Similar to the way that coffee and a good book often go perfectly together, a library without a robust collection of cookbooks (or, as Dewey would say, "cookery") is a library that could use a second helping of tasty cooking sources. Like any pot luck or other gathering where food is involved, be sure there are extra paper plates, cups, and napkins. Also, library staff should review policies (such as city policies) to ensure that all best practices are followed.

My book, Empowered. Frame your narrative. Own your power, is popular for book clubs that want to be inspired by my journey of over coming personal and professional challenges. There are many topics a book club can discuss regarding this book. Some of the key take aways are about self-leadership, learning to ask for help, adding value and learning everyday, living your values, and defining your own version of success.

Biographical book discussions are valuable on multiple levels. Of course, you learn about a person's life and the world in which they lived. Beyond that, there is also the opportunity to evaluate the author's approach. There are different types of biographies. Some are whole-life, looking at all facets of an individual. Political biographies devote most of their attention to an individual's public life, sometimes at the expense of important things that happened elsewhere. In any biography, including an autobiography, some discussion should also focus on what wasn't discussed, what was left on the "cutting room floor," and why that may be? Another approach is to have readers look at biographies of the same person from different times.

We recently started a year-long reading challenge, with a different theme every month. It's going very well so far. People enjoy being able to read what they like within the monthly theme while still feeling like they are participating in a larger 'challenge' with other patrons.