Book clubs in America: Why do we love them so much?

A casual observer of the book-club scene could be fooled into thinking that this summer was a hard one for the nation's leisure readers. Late in spring, Oprah's club shuttered, stranding publishers in what promises to be a long shoal of short print runs and offering the rest of us one literary arbiter fewer to love or hate. Borders, which ran a sort of book group of its own, shut down stores, too, after creditors refused a buyout offer from a book-club mega-company. Could reading groups be losing their sway in our culture? On one hand, this is a reasonable question; on the other, it's like asking whether the United States should worry about being out-powered by Belgium. More than 5 million adults are thought to be in reading groups, not counting online clubs, and a number of those adults have a noticeable missionary bent: If Oprah didn't get you onboard, there's a good chance that your neighbor with a Thursday group will have you marking up Love in the Time of Cholera before summer is through.[more ...] Continue reading at 'Slate'

[ Slate | 2011-07-30 00:00:00 UTC ]

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Canada’s Indigo Bookstore Chain Agrees to a Buyout Offer

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Indigo Agrees to Buyout Offer

Indigo Books & Music, Canada's troubled largest bookseller, has agreed to accept an offer of C$2.50 per share from two investment firms that will take the company private should the transaction be approved by shareholders later this spring. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

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Indigo Books and Music Gets a Buyout Offer

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Oliver Jeffers on how art can help fight the climate crisis

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Hitting the Books: Lab-grown meat is the future, just as Winston Churchill predicted

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Mining book group gold

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Which Ravenclaw from Harry Potter Are You?

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'Harry Potter: Wizards Unite' rolls out to 25 more countries

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BookExpo 2017: A Web-Savvier Edition of the ‘Chicago Manual of Style’

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L.A. billionaire becomes the 2nd-largest shareholder of L.A. Times' parent company

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Raspberry Pi Foundation introduces a new print version of its official magazine

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WBN aims for international expansion

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Book clubs in America: Why do we love them so much?

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