What to Read: The Essential Guide for Reading Group Members and Other Book Lovers

Featuring more than 30 annotated lists, ranging from classic to contemporary, this amusing and engaging guide to organizing a reading club and choosing great books offers a wealth of practical tips and ideas.

Pearlman draws her advice on how to organize a reading group straight from 10 group experts from across the U.S. Their advice is scanty and superficial, especially when compared with The Reading Group Companion. But Pearlman offers 33 excellent bibliographies--annotated lists of mysteries, sf, Jewish stories, memoirs and biographies, nineteenth-century novels, etc. Considering the voracious appetite of reading groups and the popularity of Pearlman's books, this is definitely useful material. Denise Perry Donavin

Pearlman, the director of a book club for several years, here suggests how to organize and run a reading group. She provides 33 briefly annotated lists of contemporary and classic titles arranged by subject, e.g., mysteries, science fiction, and sports. Each list contains a half-year or more of reading. This compilation is much shorter-about 1000 titles-than H.W. Wilson's Public Library Catalog (1989. 9th ed.), The Reader's Adviser (LJ 6/15/94), and The Reader's Catalog (LJ 4/15/89). Closest in size is The Reader's Companion (Hyperion, 1994), with unannotated lists compiled by experts. One may quibble about certain omissions, such as the failure to list Gone with the Wind under Southern literature, and with certain inclusions, such as listing Isaac Bashevis Singer's Scum under Jewish fiction-hardly his best work. Still, the inclusions will spark discussion. In addition, smaller libraries may find this a useful guide for collection development, since all the titles listed are in print.
Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina-Greensboro
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.