photo credit: gualtiero 

As I posted recently, I decided to join Barnes and Noble’s First Look Book Club, and read my free copy of A Fortunate Age while on vacation.  My review of this novel will be posted tomorrow, but I wanted to share my initial impressions of the online book club experience first. 

As we book clubbers know, many times we arrive at a greater appreciation of a work once we have discussed it with others.  A nice benefit of the First Look book club is that the author participates, too.  I have a feeling that having Rakoff’s smiling face at the top of the forum will keep the discussion compassionate and positive!  So, for these reasons, I’ve decided to save my review for tomorrow.

First, I thought the book club was user-friendly.  The moderator sets up a series of threads — one to register/introduce members, and then a series of threads with separate questions and discussion prompts.  It is completely free (and very easy) to sign up and log in.  No frustrations on the technological front!

Howver, one recommendation I would give to the moderator would be to post the question threads the night before — since the book club is global, I noticed a bunch of readers who were ready to discuss first thing in the morning and were afraid that the absence of threads meant they were not logged into the correct forum.  But, by early afternoon the threads were posted and the discussion began!

I did not realize that the discussion would be staggered by chapter, so I finished the entire novel over my holiday break (no small feat at 400 pages).  Today I realized quickly that this week’s discussion would only focus on chapters 1-5.  Fortunately, the moderator’s questions are very ocused on the events of these chapters, so it was easy to respond without spoilers.

By the way, I am giving away my copy tomorrow, so if you are interested in experiencing this book club for yourself, you should easily be able to catch up!  (Since I am leaving for Ethiopia next week, I will be sure to pick a reader quickly and send the novel right off!).

One last initial comment — the responses of the other readers really run the gamut from straight-forward subjective opinions to academic objective analysis.  So, I think everyone would feel comfortable commenting on the discussion.

This is my first experience with an online book club — anyone else tried one?

Welcome back!