Barnes and Noble's Book Clubs center offers the expanding book club community new ideas for what to read next. Each week, the Book Clubs center will feature an editor-recommended title for reading groups. The Book Clubs center will also include suggestions from popular authors, and free printable reading group discussion guides for thousands of books.
"As the popularity of book clubs has exploded over the years, our customers have increasingly asked us for recommendations about what to read next," said Marie Toulantis of Barnes & Noble. "The Book Clubs center helps them navigate through thousands of great fiction and nonfiction titles to find a book and print out companion reading guides that are sure to inspire interesting debate and enhance the book club experience."
Barnes Nobles Books first Book Clubs recommendation is Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House Trade Paperback), a moving memoir about Fuller's life as an English-born child whose family moves to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during its civil struggles in 1972, and the love she develops for the African people and their land. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, first published in December 2001, is newly available in trade paperback, the format of choice for many book clubs.
"I'm flattered and honored to have had my story chosen as Barnes & Noble.com's first Book Clubs pick," said Fuller. "It takes courage to write -- and courage to read -- about lives that go beyond the realm of our ordinary experiences. Discussing our response to those lives makes us all more engaged in the human condition -- that is why reading a book with other people can be such an affecting, important experience."
The Book Clubs center also has reading recommendations from top authors such as Tracy Chevalier, Michael Cunningham, Alice Sebold, and Scott Turow, along with the book club selections from the Today show, Good Morning America, and Live's "Reading with Ripa," among others. The Book Clubs center features a special collection of titles that have printable reading group discussion guides. These guides contain publisher-supplied content that can lead to better understanding of the text and can help get reading group discussions started. The thousands of titles in this collection can be sorted by category, author, format, and even price.
The Book Clubs center also has advice on how to organize, run, and maintain a winning book club, and information about how to join a group or hold a group meeting at a store.
Barnes Nobles Books provides a way to find store locations on its online bookstore.