Your Book Concierge!

We’re All Adults Here

Book Recommendations & Other Musings

by Carol Tuttle

Your Book Concierge!

How is your book club going? This recent article in Forbes https://bit.ly/2SQcwSu describes how the online presence of celebrities has added to the success and popularity of book clubs beyond the traditional setting. Instagram offers a photogenic platform for book covers and book groups, and #bookstagram is its own form of reader’s advisory. Book clubs have been formed around titles suggested by Emma Watson and Reese Witherspoon among many others, with online participation through social media. BuzzFeed has launched a book club, and on the website interestingly asks, “Do you wish you could hire someone to pick your books out for you—is a book concierge even a thing?” To which I say, “BuzzFeed, do you not hire people who are actual readers to run your book club? Any avid reader would know that a LIBRARIAN is a book concierge that is FREE!”

Libraries LOVE book clubs! And unlike online subscription book clubs that link you to a book for purchase, having library cards from Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library means your book club can be affordable. While popular new titles can have holds lists that make it tricky for everyone in your group to get the same book (either paper copy or eBook) at the same time, you don’t have to resort to buying a copy. Choose your next title from the eBooks on our WEPL hoopla collection, and everyone in your book club can check out and download a copy at the same time. NO WAITING. Just create a login with your WEPL library card. The books download right into the app, so you can read them on a smart phone or tablet (including Kindle Fire, 2014 and newer). You can even read them online in your computer browser window. There are excellent book club choices here, including these very recent popular fiction choices:

• The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict
• The Orphan’s Tale by Pam Jenoff
• The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• Carnegie’s Maid by Marie Benedict
• Tangerine by Christine Mangan
• If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• The Current by Tim Johnston
• The Gown by Jennifer Robson

One of the hottest nonfiction titles (are you still in the holds list for a print copy?) is also available: Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis.