Book Club

I had great plans to post more regularly here. I still do. Hopefully, the second ½ of January will be more productive than the first.

I wanted to catch everyone up on our book club selections.

AotP began a book club so that we could all read the same books and discuss them from a writerly point of view. This, as Tess Gerritson points out, is quite different from a regular reader. Something about writing and learning to craft stories changes the way you read. It makes you a hard critic. It also hones an attraction for a particular voice in a story. It doesn’t make it any easier to explain what it is that attracts one person to a story where another doesn’t like it at all. But, it does make you aware that being drawn into a story is so much more than the way words are organized on a page.

Anyway, thus far we’ve read several great books.

A Piece of Heaven by Barbara Samuels (contemporary women’s fiction/romance)
A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole (paranormal romance)
Adios to My Old Life by Caridad Ferrer (contemporary YA romance)
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (YA paranormal) – an unofficial selection we discussed in great detail
Dreaming of You – Lisa Kleypas (historical)

We’ve selected the book for our February and March discussions, too.

Poison study by Maria V. Snyder (fantasy romance)
Breaking Point by Suzanne Brockmann (romantic suspense)

So far, I think we’ve all been pleased with our selections. We’ve each liked certain books more than others. We liked and disliked them for different reasons.

We’ve covered several sub-genres in the “romance” genre. What have we missed? Not that not having read in a particular genre will influence our next selection, but I would like to read a bit from all genres.

We haven’t selected an erotic romance, and while that’s not what any of us read regularly, I think that eventually we need to select one for education purposes. (Right, you say.)

We also haven’t read an inspirational. And again, I want to read one for learning.

We’ve been quiet in the Urban Fantasy area. Neither Hunger nor Poison qualify for urban fantasy romance, so we should probably select one of those, too.

We need to read a western romance – either contemporary or historical, or both.

I also think we should select a historical period other than regency (which we concluded was the time period for Dreaming). Perhaps, we should read a medieval.

And, maybe, we should read a romantic suspense about cop or murder investigation, in addition to the Brockmann military style stories.

I’m also wondering if we should pick another contemporary. Barbara Samuels’s style is different than a lot of other contemporary writers.

Then, will we need to read a futuristic, too. (Think Linnea Sinclair.)

What are we missing genre-wise? What do you recommend for us?

Macy