Hi all,
I'm Tilly - the folks round at Mumsnet Towers have asked me to come and do a bit of matchmaking for the Mumsnet Book Club. Having worked in publishing for the last eight years, most recently as Penguin's Literary Marketing Director, I know there's a bewildering choice out there. Reading a book is a big commitment and you don't want to feel it's all been a waste of time. As Woody Allen put it, "If I was given the chance to live my life over again, I'd do it all the same, except I wouldn't read Beowulf'. So I'm here to help steer us through the best reads throughout the year, with a bit of luck sidestepping the duds. At the very least we're promising the following:
We'll pick books for you to choose from that are page-turning, illuminating and which hopefully tell us something we didn't know before, or make us laugh about something we did.
We won't pick any of the following: misery memoirs, celebrity biographies, yummy-mummy lit, books over 800 pages or books with no punctuation or capital letters.
All the books will be priced under £13 (most will be well under) and will be readily available to buy.
We're keen to focus on contemporary authors so that they can come and do web chats with us, or at least answer some of your questions. But if everyone is longing to try Tolstoy or always wanted to give Nabokov a shot then we'll happily go there too.
As well as choosing the titles, we'll be contacting authors and publishers for insider info on our Book of the Month, links to interviews, author history, previous novels, etc. and also to try and give you the chance to talk to the author direct. We'll invite the author to chat live at the end of our book club session, or failing that we'll try to get him/her to address any questions that crop up from our discussion.
And now for the diary dates:
As a rule we'll pick out three or four books just before the beginning of the month, and then on the first of each month and the week that follows, we'll put it to the vote. Once chosen, we'll have around four weeks to read our Book of the Month, and then we'll chat about it usually on the last Tuesday evening of that month with exceptions perhaps for Christmas/New Year. Copious amounts of fine wine beside the keyboard are an optional extra, naturally.
It would be great if possible if, rather than starting threads early, everyone held onto their opinions and discussion points for our Tuesday session, so we all get to talk about it at the same time and no crucial plot twists are revealed ahead of time!
So the rough diary for the next couple of months will be:
October Book of the Month - Page-turners
September 24th - Choice of three books goes up on site, ready for Mumsnetters to vote on
October 1st - Polls close and Book of the Month selected
Tuesday October 30th, 8.30-10pm - Open discussion on October book
November Book of the Month - Booker Prize
October 24th - Choice of three or four books up on site, polling commences
November 1st - Vote concluded
Tuesday November 27th, 8.30-10pm - Discuss November book
We'll give that a go for starters and see if works out but we're conscious that this is a work in progress - do tell us what is working and what isn't working for you so we can fine-tune it until everyone's (or nearly everyone at least ) is happy.
October's three books are up now - go to our Book of the Month October poll page to cast your vote.
And please do let us know your suggestions and ideas for anything else you'd like us to do with the club.
Thanks and happy reading!
Tillyxx (Mumsnet Book Club Editor)