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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 242 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Jennifer Lohmann. Jennifer was the 2010 RWA Librarian of the Year and has been a librarian for a very long time. She’s also a romance author and now works at NoveList. We’re going to talk about NoveList, which is a resource you might already have access to through your library, and it is a way to help you find books to read. It’s kind of cool. We also talk about hosting a romance book club. Jennifer has been running a book club in North Carolina for romance readers for several years, so we’re going to talk about selecting books that create conversation, cultivating discussion, and managing personalities in a group setting. So if you’re thinking, I wish I had a romance book club, maybe this’ll inspire you to start one locally. We also talk about the books that she’s reading and the book that she’s writing right now and what she’s self-publishing very soon.
Now, I have some news. I’m very excited! I’m going to try to control myself, but I probably won’t be successful. We’re going to do a live show! Yes! I’m so excited! Okay. [Breathes in] Deep breath, trying to be cool – yeah, it’s not going to happen. Okay. If you are attending RT, Romantic Times in Atlanta, and you would like to attend a live show taping of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, on Friday, the 5th of May, at 4:30 p.m. in the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, I am going to be doing a live show with a special series of guests and the Bitches and quizzing and mayhem and possibly semi-drunk book recommendations. I’m planning for this to be a lot of fun, so if you would like to come, I hope you do! There are two things you need to know: First, in order to attend, you have to be registered for RT, because access to the place where we’re doing the recording is limited to conference attendees only, by which I mean you have to have a badge. You can’t see me, but I’m actually tracing a square on my chest like, hey, you have to have a badge. Wow, that’s great. The other thing to know is that space in the room is limited, so I am using a resource from the lovely ladies at the Friendshipping! podcast called Attending.io, and you can save yourself a seat and get all the information you need. I will have a link to the ticketing website in the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. And if you are thinking, I could sign up right now; just tell me the URL! I will give you a short URL right now. Please don’t surf the Internet while you’re driving, and if you’re on the pod-, on the, on the treadmill, for the love of God, be careful. Okay. bit.ly – B-I-T dot L-Y slash S-P-T-B liveshow, all one word, no capital letters, S-P-T-B, as in Smart Podcast, Trashy Books liveshow. bit.ly/sptbliveshow will give you all the information you need, or just go to the podcast entry at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.
Now, two more things: one, I could not be doing this without the support of all the people who have made pledges on Patreon, so I want to extend a very deep and extremely heartfelt thank you for all of your support because I would not be able to manage the equipment and the instruction and all the details without you, so thank you so much for that!
And speaking of Patreon, I have some compliments to give out.
Elizabeth B.: You know those little doors that people put at the bases of trees, like fairy doors? They actually will open for you, so you should try one. And if the door is locked, it only means they’re in the shower right now, so come back later!
To Jo Ann W.: Yesterday, one of your former teachers thought about you and thought about how talented and intelligent you are.
And to Alleyne D.: When you give advice, it is kind, thoughtful, and always helpful, and your friends know that when they have a problem you can always help them.
And if you’re thinking, well, those compliments were spiffy! – I hope you thought that, because I have a really good time writing them – you can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. For as little as one dollar a month you can help support the show, help me upgrade equipment – or create really cool equipment so I can do a live show; oh, my gosh, I’m so excited! – so have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.
I also want to thank our podcast sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Wind River Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna. New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, US Navy veteran, and genre pioneer Lindsay McKenna captivates readers with the third book in her Wind River Valley series. With her signature military heroes in a Western romance setting, this distinguished author’s finest talents combine for an engrossing series about searching for the true meaning of love and freedom within the wild expanse of the American West. Wind River Cowboy sees two former Special Forces teammates reunited at the Bar C Ranch after a tragedy during the war in Afghanistan. Can they help each other heal the wounds of the past and embrace the secret love they’ve always felt for one another? Wind River Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna is on sale now wherever books are sold and at kensingtonbooks.com. Ooh, secret love story!
We also have a transcript sponsor this month, and I want to say thank you for that. The transcript for this episode is being brought to you by The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life, a new book from Flatiron Books by author Sharon Pywell. As a young girl, Neave was often stuck in a world that did not know what to do with her. Her small hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts, did not have a place for a girl whose feelings often put her at war with the people around her, including her mother, her brother, and the town librarian, who really wanted to keep her away from the dangerous books she really wanted to read. But through an unexpected friendship, Neave finds herself with a forbidden copy of The Pirate Lover, a steamy romance novel, and Neave discovers a world of passion, love, and betrayal. When Neave and her older sister Lilly are about to realize their professional dream as adults, Lilly suddenly disappears, and Neave must put her beloved books down and take center stage, something she has been running from her entire life. She must figure out what happened to Lilly and if she’s next. The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life is a story within a story within a story. There’s a pirate romance, a powerful bond between two sisters, and a world that is determined to hold them back. The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life is one of the most original, entertaining, exciting, and chilling novels you will read this year, and it is available now wherever books are sold.
The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.
And I will always, always have links to all of the books and things that we discuss in this episode, both at our podcast entry page at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast and at iTunes.com/DBSA, if you are an iTunes user/listener person.
This has been a rather long intro, and I just want to thank you for sticking with me, ‘cause I had a lot of things to go over. Live show, compliments, Patreon, sponsor, transcript sponsor, what we’re doing here. So now, without any further delay, on with the podcast!
[music]
Jennifer Lohmann: My name is Jennifer Lohmann. I am a writer of contemporary romance. I write for Superromance for Harlequin, and I’ve self-published a couple things. I’m also a librarian. I used to be a public librarian, and now I work for a library vendor who runs a database that helps people find their next favorite read. It’s all about book discovery.
Sarah: Okay, that’s cool.
Jennifer: Yeah! I love it! [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s seriously cool. So can you talk a little bit about how it works, or are you not allowed to talk about that part?
Jennifer: I can talk about it. I’ll just need to let EBSCO know when this is being published – that’s not the word I want.
Sarah: Aired?
Jennifer: Aired.
Sarah: Distributed. Yeah.
Jennifer: Distributed, aired – because they’ll want to know about that, but they’ll be perfectly happy to have me talk about it.
Sarah: Please do! I will, I will certainly send you a link when this goes up. So tell me about what you do. That sounds seriously cool!
Jennifer: So, NoveList is a database that is about finding your next favorite book. It covers fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks, and generally, public libraries subscribe. We have a version for school libraries that only has children’s books as well – although public libraries can get that too – but, so what you can do is you can search for a book, and it will say read-alikes, and it will say why those are read-alikes. So, let’s see, what’s a good book that you would like? What was the last book you really read and enjoyed?
Sarah: It’s not out yet, so it wouldn’t be in there. Hang on.
Jennifer: Well, go back a little further.
Sarah: Yeah, let me go backwards. Hang on.
Jennifer: Or like your favorite romance. So they have to be in print, for various reasons. We have to have –
Sarah: Ah, it has to be print.
Jennifer: We can’t do eBook only, yeah.
Sarah: Okay. The Unleashing by Shelly Laurenston.
Jennifer: So, the NoveList record of The Unleashing will give a description of the book. It will tell what series it’s in and also what book it is in that series. It gives read-alikes, so if you like The Unleashing, you might like these books. Most of the time, those books, those read-alikes are handcrafted by librarians who say, like, you will like these books because – there’s also an algorithm that matches, it matches genre, it matches subject, and it also matches something called appeal, which is unique to NoveList. So appeal talks about the mood or the feel of the book, so it’s not really about what the plot is, but in the case of The Unleashing, this book is fast-paced, it’s amusing, it’s steamy, and the writing style is engaging. So if you say, oh, yeah, you know, I want a paranormal romance that has an engaging, amusing – an engaging writing style and an amusing tone, you can click on those things, and it will pull back books that we have tagged or catalogued – because it’s metadata; it’s cataloguing metadata – as paranormal romance, fast-paced, amusing, and engaging.
Sarah: Okay, that’s seriously cool. I knew about NoveList, but I’ve never actually played with it, ‘cause I didn’t realize that I had access to it. I thought librarians only had access to it.
Jennifer: Your public library probably has access to NoveList, and you can just ask.
Sarah: So if I want to play with this and my library has access, I should be able to find something about it on my library website, right?
Jennifer: Right.
Sarah: So what do you do for the company that creates NoveList?
Jennifer: So I do sales and marketing.
Sarah: Awesome!
Jennifer: So – yep – so I do, like, blog posts and website content and also just serve an expert, so generally for a sales team, the sales folks will go out and talk to librarians –
Sarah: Right, and then –
Jennifer: – and libraries about it and ask –
Sarah: And you are fluent in librarian.
Jennifer: Yes, I’m fluent in librarian and fluent in NoveList. So.
Sarah: This makes you a very unique skill set! That’s very cool!
Jennifer: I like it a lot. It’s nice to be working on something that I used a lot when I was working in a public library –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – because, I mean, I loved it when I was working in a public library, and now I get to talk about it with people, and I get to, like, when I do this and talk to libraries about it, I will go on their website, and I’ll just poke around and spy on what they’re doing –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: – which means I get to, yeah – [laughs] – I get to see what all the cool, like, cool things libraries are doing. I just talked to a library that was having a, a candy mold collection that you could check out.
Sarah: Okay, that’s cool.
Jennifer: Yeah! I was just then like, yeah, wow! Okay!
Sarah: That’s brilliant.
Jennifer: And they also, they, they lent fishing rods, too.
Sarah: Also cool.
Jennifer: That’s one of the best parts of my job is poking around library websites and going, oh, my gosh! This is awesome! That’s so cool that they’re doing that! So.
Sarah: I never would have thought to see if my library has fishing rods, and I’m actually pretty bummed about our library here because the library that we had in New Jersey, they would rent out video games on multiple platforms, and there’s no video game collection at this library, and my kids were like, this, this town is terrible! Like, this was way back when we moved.
Jennifer: [Laughs]
Sarah: We should never have moved; there are no video games in this library. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, you’re right, that sucks.
Jennifer: Yeah, that, especially if you’re used to it.
Sarah: Yes, and then you move and you can’t get it anymore? Sadness!
Jennifer: Yep. Yeah.
Sarah: So, do you still run your romance book club?
Jennifer: I do still run the romance book club! We have a meeting on Thursday, and we’re reading time travel romance.
Sarah: Ooh!
Jennifer: So, yeah, I, I did not give it up when I left the public library. I held on tight to my –
Sarah: To your book club?
Jennifer: – book club. Yeah, they’re the best part of my month.
Sarah: [Laughs] That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, because I know –
Jennifer: Yep!
Sarah: – a number of people who listen to the podcast and read the website are thinking, you know, I’d like to start a romance book club, maybe find people who live near me who also read romance and, you know, talk about romances specifically, so I wanted to ask you, how did your romance book club start? And how long has it been running?
Jennifer: It has been running since August or September of 2010?
Sarah: Dude!
Jennifer: Yeah, it’s a – [laughs] – it’s a really long time. And it’s actually, it’s, there are people who came to the first book club who still come regularly, which is really awesome. When –
Sarah: That’s seriously cool.
Jennifer: Yeah. And it started when I moved from the Main Library in Durham to the Southwest Regional Library. The Southwest Regional Library had just reopened. It has a different patron base, and I thought this was a patron base where maybe I could run a romance book club, and we could meet in the library. So I scheduled it; I stuck it on Meetup. The Triangle area of North Carolina is a huge Meetup place, or at least it was in 2010; I assume it still is.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Meetup is really popular, so I put it on Meetup, and I just was like, okay, we’ll see what happens. I think the first book we read was Smooth Talking Stranger by – totally –
Sarah: – Lisa Kleypas?
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: That’s a good book club choice for a romance book club.
Jennifer: It was great. And, yeah, I, we meet once a month on the first Thursday of the month. Generally anywhere between, like, ten and sixteen of us show up. We now read two books a month.
Sarah: Wow!
Jennifer: Yeah – per request from folks who were like, well, you know, one book really isn’t enough; I’d like to be able to read more. So we’re reading Just in Time for a Highlander by Gwyn Cready and Must Love Breeches by Angela Quarles –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: – for, for time travel. Because I’m doing this for the library, we have a couple requirements. The library has to own enough copies that people can check them out –
Sarah: Of course.
Jennifer: – and it also has to be in print, mostly because we have a couple people who come to the book club who are not interested in eBooks.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: Which can makes some things a little bit harder for finding titles.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: Yeah, so we always pick, we have a theme, and probably, like, once every four months or something I’ll poll the group and say, like, hey, what do you guys want to read? Like, what haven’t you read? What are you interested in reading? And it can be authors, it can be themes, it can be time periods, it can be subgenres, whatever, and I’ll write it down, and I’ll poke around and see, like, what can I find that the library either owns or can buy that’s getting, like, good reviews. They also want it to be the first in a series. That is a lot harder, so that doesn’t always happen.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s hard.
Jennifer: I, yeah. [Laughs] I try. And so I’ll pick two books that fit the theme –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – and then assign them. We are doing, let’s see, it’s time travel this month. Last month was first book in a very long series –
Sarah: Ooh.
Jennifer: – so we read Virgin River –
Sarah: Oh-ho-ho!
Jennifer: – and we also read Slave to Sensation. So –
Sarah: Those are very different books.
Jennifer: Yeah. It was really, it was first book in a series, so if you, you know, for those long-running series that have hit, like, twelve books, and you’ve never started? We’ll just read the first book.
Sarah: We’ll start with one, right.
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: Wow.
Jennifer: So, and I’m trying to think what else have we done? We’ve done, like, ‘20s books. We did, we’ve done, like, fanfic conversions or sort of movie, winks at movies?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Gosh, it’s just, you know, whatever they think of that they want to read, I will try and find books –
Sarah: Do the –
Jennifer: – that fit.
Sarah: Do the requests that they give you sometimes, like, match the seasons or what’s going on around them, or do, do requests match what’s happening around the group, or is it generally much more disconnected or completely separated from actual environment?
Jennifer: It varies. So, we have read around Christmas holiday romances –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – which is kind of amusing, because a lot of the group is kind of like, oh, not really interested in holiday anthologies, but they kind of want to read a holiday anthology around the holidays –
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: – ‘cause it’s the holidays, and that’s what you do? So we’ve done that a couple of times. A bunch of us in the group went to a program called Gender, Sexuality, Feminism and the Romance Novel at Duke with Ilona Andrews –
Sarah: Yes, that was last month, right?
Jennifer: Yep. Ilona Andrews, Eloisa James, Sarah MacLean, and Alisha Rai?
Sarah: How was it? Was it cool?
Jennifer: It was great! And they would really like to read Ilona Andrews and Alisha Rai. We’ve read Eloisa James and Sarah MacLean, so those will be added to our list. So, like, stuff like that will come up. Some of the folks will go to, like, RT and they’ll meet somebody that they really like and come back and say, like, hey, I met this person, their book was really good, or I just enjoyed hearing them speak: can we read them?
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: And sometimes it’ll just be like, you know, I’m sick of reading about dukes. Like, please find me a historical romance that is not set in Regency or Victorian or Georgian England. Please, God, I want something else.
Sarah: [Laughs] And you know, it’s funny, the minute somebody asks me for that, my first thought is Rose Lerner, but not all of her books are available in print.
Jennifer: Right. Yep.
Sarah: But she writes about historical characters often in common periods, but usually they are middle class or servant class. Same with Courtney Milan.
Jennifer: Yes. And we’ve read some Courtney Milan – this is where that print version gets really difficult, because once you branch out and it can just be eBooks, the world of romance novels opens up really widely –
Sarah: Oh, yes!
Jennifer: – but if it has to be in print to serve our non-print-reading patrons, then all of a sudden we get much, much smaller.
Sarah: I had a very similar problem with the book club that I used to run with All Romance eBooks. This was years ago, but the proposal, the idea, was that I would pick a book, and then they would offer a fifty percent rebate on it.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So they would offer a two-week rebate, people would buy the book through them, and then I’d host a chat and we’d discuss it. So of course I was going for books that were both print and eBook, because not everybody was reading eBooks. This was, you know, seven or eight years ago. Well, the problem was agency pricing. All of a sudden, five out of six publishers –
Jennifer: Oh, right.
Sarah: – I couldn’t get, I couldn’t select their books because they were ineligible for rebate, so I was limited for a really long time to Sourcebooks, Kensington, and then Random House, and then Random House went agency, and then they joined Penguin, and it was like, okay, so I have to pick self-published, small press, or non-agency titles. So I would get requests for, like, can we read this really big book that’s, you know, coming out, and everyone’s excited about it, and I’m like, well, we can read it, but I can’t get a rebate on it.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yep.
Sarah: It was very frustrating to work within parameters that, that limit what you select that you can’t control.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: But it’s interesting that if you want print, the difference between what’s available in print and what’s available in eBook now in 2017 is completely different.
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: It’s hugely different. So, when you’re running the romance book club, what kind, what, what are some books that have had great discussions? What kind of books do, are you, do you select and you think, oh, this is going to be a great meeting? And where do you guys meet?
Jennifer: We meet at the library. Occasionally, if there’s something happening at a library or, like, Duke around, I’ll schedule a meet up, like the Romance Writers, or the – Eva Perry, the Wake County library system is having a Romance Writers Tea, and so, like, I’ll list all of those on our website. I’ll list, like, the thing that was listed at Duke I listed on our website, just so other people can see what they are. But otherwise, we meet at the library from 7:00 until about 8:30, depending on how the discussion goes.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: The discussion is better when we have people who, how did you put it? Like, the, I remember you had a blog post about, I’m interested in books that are flipping me off?
Sarah: [Laughs] Yes. That’s the, the Good-, the Goodreads star average looks like it’s flipping you off –
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: – so low in the fives, higher in the fours and the threes. Any disagreement makes a book review much more interesting.
Jennifer: Yes, and so those are much better. When we have someone who comes in and says, like, I loved it for these reasons, and a bunch of other people who go, yeah, this was pretty good for these reasons, and someone else who’s like, I hated it because – and I will say, for all the authors out there, like, someone hating your book doesn’t actually mean that they’re not going to go and read the next one.
Sarah: Thank you! Preach.
Jennifer: [Laughs] We’ve had books that people were just like, this was crazysauce! Like, this was nuts! I don’t even understand, but I have to know what happens next, so I’m going to read the next in the series.
Sarah: Yep!
Jennifer: I’m like, okay, well, thanks!
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Jennifer: Please come back and report.
Sarah: This is actually the big piece of advice I give to authors about commenting on reviews: I always say, don’t do it. Not only because it’s a space for readers to talk, but blogging software works in a way that if you leave a comment, anyone who leaves a comment after you, you’ll receive a copy of that message in your email, so you’re effectively subscribing to the thread when you leave a comment, and if the author comments –
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: – people are very hesitant, because they know that what they say is going to get back to the author, and that will absolutely, nine times out of ten, stop the person who wants to say, oh, my gosh, my reaction was completely opposite. I hated this book, and here are six thousand words as to why, but that’s actually what you want if you have a review.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Sarah: If the review is negative and someone in the comments is like, oh, my God, I loved it! Here’s why! Or the, or the reverse, that makes readers look at that situation and go, oh! Ooh, I wonder where I’m going to fall? And then they click, and then they buy, and then they read. Like, that’s what you want. Disagreement is actually, like, gold.
Jennifer: Yeah! It’s far more interesting.
Sarah: Yep!
Jennifer: Yeah. So that’s, that is, those are my perfect books is when I manage to get a, like, at least one of those books is, gets you that, that Goodreads, Goodreads finger.
Sarah: Yep. Flipping you off with the Goodreads reviews.
Jennifer: Yep. If they are, if we have a book that everybody’s like, this was pretty good; I really enjoyed it, then that is pretty much the end of that conversation.
Sarah: Right? Yep. Well, those were some words. It did what I expected. It was there.
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: Meh.
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: It’s the hardest review to write, too. Like, okay, well, it, it did all the things that I expected. Or, or worse, when I, when I go to write the review and I can’t actually remember the particulars?
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, ‘cause it just, it didn’t stick out.
Sarah: No, and it didn’t do anything that really grabbed me in a major way, which sounds kind of skeezy –
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: – when you say it that, like that, but, you know.
Jennifer: [Laughs]
Sarah: So were there, can you think of some titles that were books that really created that kind of discussion? Do you remember any that people were like, oh, we’ve got to talk about this?
Jennifer: So, The Iron Duke was one that really stuck out. The Iron Duke started, we, we have one member who reads a lot of romance, and she started making notes, and it started with The Iron Duke. Like, she was coming before then, and then she came for The Iron Duke, which, you know, ninety-nine percent of the people at that, at that book club meeting loved The Iron Duke.
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Jennifer: We had two people who showed up just to talk about The Iron Duke; we’ve never seen them again.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: But, but this one member hated it. She had her list of pages about why she hated it –
Sarah: Oh, my gosh.
Jennifer: – and what she didn’t like about it, and so we had a lot of discussion about what that was and why that mattered and the things that she brought up, and now it’s kind of, it’s, you know, a little bit of an inside, an inside joke that she’s going to bring her sheet –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: – and we all want to see what’s on her sheet so we can talk about her sheet.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Is it difficult to manage discussion and personalities sometimes?
Jennifer: The ladies are all really awesome, and the, we have been meeting for so long, and they all remember, like, their first meeting and how the book club came together, that everybody who comes is pretty good at welcoming new members, inviting them to speak, asking them, like, hey, you’ve never been here before. You’ve been really quiet. Like, what did you think of this book?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And –
Sarah: So you have generous facilitators in the group.
Jennifer: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: That’s really lovely, ‘cause sometimes you go to a book club and it’s like one person really just wants to talk for an hour.
Jennifer: No, I don’t have any of those.
Sarah: You’ve, that’s excellent!
Jennifer: Yes. And I do have also – I’ve run three book clubs, maybe?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And I have always just let them, like, we’ll talk about the book for a while, and then people will break off into their side conversations because the book reminded ‘em of this movie they saw that, oh, Patty wants to know about that movie, and Sally, I’ve got to tell Sally, too. And then I’ll give that, like, five minutes, and then I’ll bring the, the book club back. Okay, let’s get back; let’s talk about this piece that we’ve not discussed in this book. And I just let it ebb and flow, and I try and keep it mostly on the conversation about the book, if there’s something to talk about in the book.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: But I do recognize that it’ll, it’ll go out, and I let it go out, and everybody socialize for a bit and bring it back, so that everybody has time to chat.
Sarah: Right. Because that’s part of what makes people come back.
Jennifer: Yes, it’s the friendships. I mean, these ladies are – no matter how bad my day has been, book club always makes me feel better. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s lovely!
Jennifer: So, I want everybody who comes to that book club to have that same experience.
Sarah: And, and when you have a group – in my experience generally, romance readers are very generous people, and we are all –
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – so used to being shamed and isolated and marginalized for what we like to varying degrees, whether it’s overt shaming or just subtle, you know, side-eye? I think when we meet each other, we’re very eager to, to, to, like, talk to people about the books, ‘cause not everybody has a group with which to talk about romance. I’m really happy that it’s, like, such a lovely group!
Jennifer: They’re fabulous; I love all of them. [Laughs]
Sarah: Aw!
Jennifer: So, yeah. I mean, I’ve run it now, it’s, I can see it was founded August 16th, 2010, so, yeah, and I’ve gone, I think I’ve missed one book club in those seven years.
Sarah: Wow.
Jennifer: So.
Sarah: So if you meet in the library, are you allowed to have, like, beverages or anything?
Jennifer: Yes. We’re a library program, and so there are different rules. The library has different rules for outside programs. You have to pay a fee; outside programs have to pay a refreshment fee –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – but we’re a library program. So I don’t bring beverages or snacks or anything like that. I have a couple of times bought cupcakes. When Lisa won the Romance Writers of the year, Romance Writers Librarian of the Year award, I brought, I bought cupcakes so that we could celebrate her cupcake –
Sarah: Aw.
Jennifer: – her with cupcakes. But if other people bring in snacks or drinks or whatever, that’s fine.
Sarah: It’s no big deal?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Sarah: If, if someone wants to start a romance book club and host it at their library, are libraries generally open to that type of thing?
Jennifer: I think that really, really depends on the library and what their – so, it could matter what their strategic plan looks like, and does a book club of any kind fit in their strategic plan, or a new book club –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – fit in the strategic plan, or are they trying to do something else? Are they trying to focus on a different population or a different kind of thing?
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And then it would matter if they have, if they have time and meeting space. It’s always worth asking? It is great, and it was great as a librarian, when people came to me with, when patrons came to me with programs that they had an idea for and they were willing to do some of the work for and they wanted to run and take care of. It does require a commitment, so –
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: I mean, that kind of goes without saying, except I have had people who were shocked that if they wanted to run a book club, that meant that they had to run a book club?
Sarah: [Laughs] They wanted a book club to happen, not that they wanted to run it.
Jennifer: Yes. [Laughs] And so, you know, different libraries have different checkpoints just to make sure that someone who is coming to them with a program, that it fits within the library’s –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – like, strategic plan and mission statement, etc. That the volunteer is going to do the things that the volunteer needs to do and will uphold their end of the bargain.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: You know, and libraries have different rules and different policies about this, so those always vary by library.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: But it’s worth checking.
Sarah: Who should, who should a reader go and look for? Just ask a librarian and they’ll, they’ll direct them to the right person?
Jennifer: I would say go to the reference desk and say, like, say, hey, I’d like to do a romance book club; is there a person in the library I should talk to? The person at the reference desk is probably a librarian, but they may not be. They also might, there might be a person in the system who works with book clubs specifically or programs specifically. There might be a readers’ services librarian that’s at another branch –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – who will organize this. Libraries are organized so differently around the –
Sarah: Yes, everyone is different, right?
Jennifer: Yep. [Laughs] So it’s just worth asking, like, this is what I want to do; who should I talk to? And you might get that person; hopefully, you’ll get referred to that person.
Sarah: So if someone is listening and they’re like, all right, I want to do this. I’m going to break out of my introvert shell, and I’m going to host a book club. Oh, my gosh. What are some of, some of the pieces of advice that you would have for someone about running a romance book club?
Jennifer: The first maybe several times you meet, bring questions.
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: That gives everybody something to talk about.
Sarah: Do you tell people the questions in advance, or do you just bring them and say, okay, questions.
Jennifer: I brought them and I passed them out, and I did that for about six months. I created questions, passed them out, and then everybody took off on their own, and now I don’t worry about it anymore. But I did. I would pick a book that, especially when you’re starting out?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: Pick a book that’s popular and interesting and that people, that there’s a lot of stuff to talk about, but that people like and know they like. So Smooth Talking Stranger was good for that. Smooth Talking Stranger is a great book; there are things in it to talk about –
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: – and, yeah.
Sarah: There’s a lot going on in that book that’s not just the romance.
Jennifer: Right. And so, picking a book like Lord of Scoundrels would also be good. Just something that’s generally positive. Now I don’t worry so much about that because there is a different level of trust in a book club that’s been going on for seven years –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – that I can pick something that – actually, I, I can think, oh, you know, I can, these five people aren’t going to like it, and so I can take that bit of a risk, but when you’re starting out, I would be kind and let people come and talk about why they loved the book –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – before they come and talk about, they feel comfortable enough to come and talk about books they didn’t like.
Sarah: Right. You’re, you’re going to try to select books that you think the majority of the people will enjoy in some way.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: Before you introduce some sort of controversial or, or polarizing romance.
Jennifer: Yes. And I think just recognizing that different people have different ways that they want, different expectations for a book club?
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Jennifer: And different approaches to a book. So we have a couple folks who will like pretty much every book that they read. They will say very nice things about it, and they will like it, and they’ll talk about the things they didn’t like and then come back and say, but overall, I liked it.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: And so long as those folks are happy to sit in a, in a book discussion where other people say, well, yeah, but I didn’t like it –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – and that, I think, can be one of the trickier places, ‘cause not everybody likes to pick apart a book.
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: Or hear a book picked apart.
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: And I think, especially for romance readers who don’t generally get invited to book clubs where, like, part of it is that they’re going to pick apart and be critical of a book –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – they may not know that they don’t like that –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – and don’t want to be a part of it.
Sarah: And it, I, I notice that also with guest reviews. Like, when we do the RITA Reader Challenge, there are people who sign up, and then I’ll get email about how difficult it is to criticize a book, that, that, that it is not easy for everyone to do.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: And it’s not easy for people to listen to or read either. I’ve seen that a lot as well.
Jennifer: Right. And I also, I’ve had authors who say, like, hey, you’re reading my book; you want me to come? And I always say no.
Sarah: No!
Jennifer: [Laughs]
Sarah: Nooo! Nooo! When I do the book club chat, if I have the author coming, I have them come for the last half hour?
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: And I say, if you want to sign in and watch the discussion for the first hour, that’s totally fine. I’ll know you’re there, you can Direct Message me quietly in the software that we’re using, but please don’t participate. I mean, if you want to read, that’s totally up to you, but this space is not for the part where you’re talking, because if you enter the conversation, it will stop.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: Like, stop cold. So, yeah, you, I completely agree with you.
Jennifer: Yeah. And I’ve done it, it’s funny, I’ve done it for the other, one of the other book clubs I ran which was general fiction, general non-, narrative nonfiction. I had at least one time where we Skyped in with the author, and it was great! That was The Last Policeman, which was a, which was a great mystery.
Sarah: Ooh!
Jennifer: It’s pre-apocalyptic, so the world is going to end in, like, a month or something. Everybody knows that a meteor is going to come and wipe everybody out like the dinosaurs?
Sarah: Whoa!
Jennifer: And there’s a murder, and the, it’s in Portland, Maine, I think. The policeman’s like, we should solve this; I think it’s a murder. And everybody else is like –
Sarah: Who cares?
Jennifer: – but the world’s going to end in a month? Why do we – yeah, who cares? So the author came and Skyped in with us, and everybody had a lot of questions. They wanted to know ideas for this, how he got it published –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: But general fiction authors have a different understanding of what their readers are going to expect and say about their book –
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: – than romance authors do.
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: So –
Sarah: That’s very true. So if someone is starting a club, and, and an author wants to attend, generally your rule of thumb is, that’s not such a good idea.
Jennifer: Yep. I say no.
Sarah: Have you ever had, ‘cause it’s, if it’s a library program, it’s open to everybody, right?
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: Have you ever had people try to join because they thought it was going to be, like, some salacious sex talk? I know that when I was doing events for both of my books, there was – and these were book stores and in some libraries – there was always that one guy who –
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: – would attend everything that had to do with women and make in-, you know, inappropriate comments or just be generally creepy. Any creepers that you’ve had to deal with?
Jennifer: Nobody has been creepy. I have had folks join the Meetup and think it’s going to be something else?
Sarah: Like a romance hooking-up?
Jennifer: Book club, yes.
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: Like, a place where people meet for, to find romance, and usually, like, they’ll sign up for something, they’ll kind of see the interaction and see the books that they’re, that get sent, like, hey, these are our books for the next month! And I’ll get an, like, a message back on Meetup that says, this wasn’t for me.
Sarah: Yeah. Least they figured it out and didn’t want to come in and, like, decide to make it what they wanted.
Jennifer: Yes. And I hate to say it, but, you know, when a, when a dude shows up, and we’ve had a couple dudes show up, we’re always a little like, so, hi! Why are you here?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: And the first meeting this one guy came; he didn’t say a word. We have no idea why he was there, he’s never been back, he didn’t say a word, but at the end of every meeting there’s a lot of, like, what are you reading? Oh, is it good? I’m going to take notes! And he wrote down everything that everybody suggested and has never been back! And we had another guy who came; he used to read a lot of fantasy romance, and you know, the first time he showed up it, it was a little like, hey, why are you here, dude? I mean, we’re good with dudes reading romance; you just don’t, dudes don’t normally, so –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: But he came for, I don’t know, nine months, always very interested in the conversation, always had a lot to say. You know, it was interesting to get a, a guy’s point of view, honestly.
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Jennifer: So, and I think we’ve had, like, one other person, guy who showed up clearly thinking it was something else, but he wasn’t creepy about it. He was just, like –
Sarah: Yeah. Oh!
Jennifer: – I am not in my space –
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: – so I’m going to be quiet, and then I’m going to leave.
Sarah: Aw. I once went to Taco Bell with my husband, ‘cause we dropped the kids off for a weekend, and we decided that we were going to go and try the Taco Bell tacos that had the Doritos shells?
Jennifer: [Gasps] I still want those.
Sarah: Yeah. They were, they were incredibly more delicious than I expected. But I’m in there – and I have such clear memories of this – I was in the Taco Bell, we were discussing, and I look over, and there’s a guy, a dude in a booth. He’s got, like, all the tacos, like, all of them, and he is straight-up reading Nora Roberts. Not even the suspense! Like, straight contemporary Nora Roberts. One hand with the taco, one hand with the book, and he was there the whole time we were there, and I was having that, like – if it had been a woman I would have been like, have you read the other ones?! But it was a dude!
Jennifer: Yeah.
Sarah: And I didn’t want to talk to him. I want that guy to come to a book club.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Sarah: I want the Nora Roberts reader at Taco Bell. That’s the, that would be a cool person. I worry for myself doing something at a library that, like, like I said, there’d be creepers.
Jennifer: Yep.
Sarah: And that’s hard to handle, especially if you’re, like, on your own and you’re volunteering or you’re a librarian; it’s hard to manage that –
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: – ‘cause you want to create a safe space for readers, because the other thing about romance is that romance is about intimacy, and so the discussions are often, I assume from your club, often sometimes a little bit on the more intimate side. Is that the case?
Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, we talk about both sex in the books, but we also talk about it in, like, our own personal experience dating. We’ve been – or dating or in relationships or however it goes – and we’ve been meeting for seven years, so we all know each other’s, we know a lot about each other’s lives and backgrounds and histories, all that backstory. We know a lot of it about each other –
Sarah: Yeah.
Jennifer: – and a lot of that’s very personal, and yeah, you don’t, you want it to be safe to reveal that sort of thing.
Sarah: Yeah. And you want it to be a safe space for the people who are there while also welcoming new members. That’s, that’s, that’s tricky!
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: That is very tricky.
Jennifer: Some of it’s just a balance and, like, you know, shutting down people – and I don’t have to really shut down people very often. I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve ever had to do it in my romance book club, but chilling people out who are getting a little overmuch. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah.
Jennifer: I’ve definitely had to do it in my general fiction book club. Like, okay, let’s not talk about this now, or you know, I think we’re going to let someone else speak to that right now, so just hold that thought.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: So, yeah, I mean, it happens. I’ve been, I’ve been lucky in the Romance Lovers Book Club, but I have –
Sarah: Is that what it’s called? The Romance Lovers Book Club?
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: Awesome. Which I can, I can sort of see why someone would read that and be like, oh, this is a book for people who are looking for a, you know, to meet people.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: The romance readers would read that and be like, ooh, that’s for us!
Jennifer: Yep. [Laughs] I know normally, you know, the Meetups just, the Meetups have the book covers, book descriptions – now, because everybody wants to read the first in the series, I tell them which part in the series it is –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: – and how long the series is.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And that’s pretty much it. Sometimes, if the theme is obvious, then the theme is obvious. If the theme is really wacky and I was clearly desperate for a theme, then there’ll be a Guess the Theme note at the bottom, but it’s real –
Sarah: Oh, that’s cool!
Jennifer: – it’s basic. [Laughs] Sometimes I get desperate.
Sarah: Yeah, I can understand. Is it, have there ever been months where you’re just like, all right, I, I got no idea?
Jennifer: I generally plan out the books like four months in advance, so I’ve screwed up scheduling and, like, scheduled four books on the same day ‘cause I just hit the wrong month. It’s, February and March are terrible for this –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – because if there are twenty-eight days in February, then the days of the week are the same in March, so I’ll schedule things for February 1st and March 1st. But I have not, because I schedule so far out in advance and they usually have a list of, like, twenty things that people want to read, I generally have enough to pick from so that I’m not stuck trying to figure out what to read. It means that somethings, sometimes folks have been asking to read something in a romance that I just can’t offer them for forever.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And sometimes it means, like, sometimes that’s because I can’t find a second book.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: I can find one book on that theme or on that subgenre or with that setting, but I can’t find another, so I have to hold that idea and that one book until I can find another theme that it fits under. So if it’s a setting that’s really hard to match and I can find one book in that setting, then I’ve got to figure out, okay, well, this book is also friends to lovers, so when I’ve got a friends to lovers book –
Sarah: Yes.
Jennifer: – I’ll just pop them together, and we won’t theme it on series, but –
Sarah: And when you select books, you try to keep them thematically paired in some way.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: And –
Jennifer: Most-, mostly that’s so I can, as I am picking books, that helps me narrow down what I’m picking as well.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: ‘Cause otherwise it’s just a wealth of – having just complained that I’m limited to print and stuff the library can buy, that’s still a lot of books, and if I’m just picking from that entire wealth, I need a way to, to narrow it down for myself.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And it’s nice if they share a theme, because then we can talk about how the books did this differently and how they compared to one another.
Sarah: That, and that makes for an easier discussion.
Jennifer: Yes!
Sarah: That does make a lot of sense.
Jennifer: Much easier.
Sarah: Yeah, no kidding. So, I have two more questions that actually don’t have anything to do with book clubs.
Jennifer: Yes!
Sarah: Is there anything else you wanted to say about romance book clubs?
Jennifer: They’re awesome, and everybody should be able to have a romance book club near them. I hope that everybody does at some point in the future, because they’re great.
Sarah: Okay. Awesome.
Jennifer: [Laughs] I love mine, so.
Sarah: So the first question I have is, what are you working on book-wise right now?
Jennifer: I have a book due March 3rd, so on Friday, for Harlequin Superromance. It should come out in December of 2017.
Sarah: Ooh!
Jennifer: It is online dating, that’s going to be what I’m going to be talking about for, actually, I think probably, like, three books with Superromance; that’s yet to be decided. But this book – right now it’s tentatively titled Perfectly Matched, but let’s be honest, it will probably be different when it comes out in –
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: – December 2017 – is, I watched this TED Talk by this woman who hacked Match, and she had this algorithm that she used, and she, like, gave rankings to different things that she cared about. She beta tested, like, her pictures and her, and her profile. I mean, she did all of this research, like, just really what happens when a scientist hits Match, like, a data person hits Match and tries to figure out how they can work it. And of course she met this guy, they share the taste in movies, they share everything, and I watched the TED talk for my own personal dating, online dating, like research for me, and so I was watching it and totally taking notes, but even as she’s talking about it, I was like, oh, no.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Jennifer: No, her, her perfect hero, uh-uh, he is going to fail that algorithm. Like, he has to!
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: It is way more interesting if he fails it.
Sarah: Yep.
Jennifer: And then what does she do? So that’s what’s coming out in December 2017. And then I’m working on some other side projects as well that don’t have anything solid under them yet, but that’s the big one.
Sarah: Now I also always ask everybody – and this is a horrible question to ask a librarian – what you’re reading that you recommend and want to tell people about.
Jennifer: So, the romances I’m reading have all been for the RITA books, so I can’t talk about those. [Laughs]
Sarah: No, of course not, no!
[Laughter]
Sarah: I always forget there’s a period when I interview people and it’s like, oh, it’s all RITA books, so I can’t tell you. Let me think back a couple of weeks. [Laughs]
Jennifer: Yeah, but the thing I’m listening to on audio is not a romance at all but is a thing I have been talking to my fiancé about for, like, the past month, and he’s kind of sick of it?
[Laughter]
Sarah: So of course I want to hear all about it; bring it on.
Jennifer: Because it’s so good! So I’ve been reading, listening to Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime?
Sarah: Oh, my gosh, I have that on my list.
Jennifer: It’s so good. I have come home – I listen to it on my lunch break when I take a walk, and then the Viking and I carpool, and so I’ll get in the car and I’ll be like, oh, Trevor Noah said – and he’s like, okay. Thanks!
[Laughter]
Jennifer: And it’s been like that for about a month. But Born a Crime is so good. On audio, it’s fabulous. Trevor Noah reads it, and so you get to hear him, like, do impressions of his mom, which is really adorable.
Sarah: That is the best, and I’ve, and I’ve seen clips of him switching between English and Afrikaans.
Jennifer: Yes.
Sarah: And –
Jennifer: And he switches between, like, four different languages in this book.
Sarah: That’s so cool.
Jennifer: Yeah. And, you know, he talks about, he just talks about what it is like to grow up as an exception to a very strict and rigorous racial grouping –
Sarah: Yeah.
Jennifer: – because he doesn’t fit in any of ‘em.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And he said all sorts of just profound things that really felt like they related to politics, that they related to my interactions with the Viking’s nineteen-year-old daughter that I thought that she should hear because they were so good. I mean, so, everywhere from how I deal with what I listen to the news to how I talk to a nineteen-year-old girl, it, it felt like it covered all of those parts of my life, and I learned about growing up in South Africa in this very particular moment. It’s this lovely story about a father and a son, or, sorry, a mother and a son and, you know, their interaction and how they learn and grow with each other. It’s just, there’re so many layers to it I cannot recommend that book enough.
Sarah: That’s so cool, and listening to something like that makes it, I mean it just adds to the experience, I think.
Jennifer: Yes. Yeah, it’s really great. So that’s the big thing that’s not something I was reading for book club – [laughs] – or one of the RITA books that I can’t talk about, that I think everybody should read.
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this episode. I want to thank Jennifer Lohmann for hanging out with me. If you would like links to NoveList or if you’d like to see if it’s available in your area, first go to your library website or ask your local, friendly, awesome librarian. I will also have links to options for exploring and all of the books and things that we talked about in this episode.
This episode was brought to you by Wind River Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna. New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, US Navy veteran, and genre pioneer Lindsay McKenna is back, captivating readers with the third book in her Wind River Valley series. With her signature military heroes and a Western romance setting, this distinguished author’s finest talents combine for an engrossing series about searching for the true meaning of love and freedom within the wild expanse of the American West. Wind River Cowboy sees two former Special Forces teammates reunited at the Bar C Ranch after a tragedy during the war in Afghanistan. Can they help each other heal the wounds of the past and embrace the secret love they’ve always felt for one another? Wind River Cowboy by Lindsay McKenna is on sale now wherever books are sold and on kensingtonbooks.com.
And while I was recording that, my most excellent assistant and sound engineer feline Orville decided that now is the time to flop over onto my desk, so Orville would like you to check out this book is the only way I’m interpreting that. Also he wants me to rub his belly, which is a very large belly; I’ll be here a while.
The podcast transcript is also sponsored, and I would like to say thank you as well for that. The transcript for this episode is being brought to you by The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life, a new book from Flatiron Books by author Sharon Pywell. Chevy Stevens, who is the New York Times bestselling author of Never Let You Go says that “The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life [by Sharon Pywell] is a fascinating blend of genres that flows together seamlessly, creating the most original story I’ve read in a long time. Partly narrated from the afterlife, this riveting suspense story manages to be darkly comic at times…while dealing with complex family dynamics that can fester for years. The second narrative, an intriguing pirate romance, is deliciously entertaining, but the real love story in this book is the one between these sisters, and their bond that can’t be broken in any life.” You can find The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life on sale wherever books are sold!
So here’s a question I already know the answer to: should I put a picture of Orville with his belly just hanging out? He’s flat, he is flat on his back, all four paws in the air, demanding affection while I record, so I think I should share a picture of that, right? Right? Yeah, okay, I totally will.
I want to thank everyone who has supported the show on Patreon. If you are curious and would like to learn more about that, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support means an enormous amount, and it is helping me put together a live show at Romantic Times. Tickets are free, though you do have to be registered for RT to attend because it is an area that’s only accessible to conference attendees. There’s a link in the podcast entry for you to get your seat, or you can go to bit.ly, B-I-T dot L-Y slash S-P-T-B liveshow. That’s SPTB for Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. sptbliveshow at bit.ly [bit.ly/sptbliveshow]. You can find all the details! I am so excited about this.
One more thing: it has come to my attention that some of you have been leaving reviews for the show at iTunes and Stitcher and other places? Thank you for that! I apparently had no idea that this is a thing that people are super into, which is ridiculous ‘cause, you know, I’m actually a reviewer? Yeah, it, I’ll be honest with you: there are some things that happen with reviews that aren’t books that I’m always surprised by, and this is one of them, so if you’ve left a review for the show, thank you! That’s so cool of you!
And on behalf of Jennifer Lohmann, Orville and his belly, and Wilbur and everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.
[awesome music]
I CAN’T FREAKING FRACKING WAAAAAIT TO CATCH UP ON MY PODCASTS BECAUSE I NEEEEEED THIS ONE IN MY BRAIN!
I tried launching a romance book club at my local library but after 8 months & no support from the library itself, it bombed. They didn’t even have a romance section in their library, which should have given me heads up I was gonna get the side-eye and judgement from the employees. Nobody ever showed up after 8 months of trying.
SO!
I’m moving it 45 minutes & 1 state away and trying there. I’m waiting to hear back about finalizing some details, but I’ve already picked the first book; An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole! (I’ve been live tweeting my reading experience of it on my Twitter AND FREAKING LOSING MY FANGIRL SHIT AS A RESULT!)
Point is, I’m suuuuper pumped to hear what advice Jennifer can offer me because I’ve never done something like this before. I don’t have any IRL friends, so making new friends or even just having women in my life to talk about romance books with, has me praying the club will “work” this time around.
NICE. SO NICE.
I’m currently in college for information science and when she started talking about metadata and tagging I perked up, because my current class is information organization, and we talk about those A LOT. In fact, my next class paper is basically an evaluation and analysis of the metadata and tags that have been generated by the classroom library that we have created in Zotero. I haven’t started it yet, because I am a failure as a person. Our first major paper (we have two for the course, along with all the other assignments) was a metadata application project where we created library records for five items of something we had a collection of and explain why we used the format we did. I did mine on romance novels that I had on my Kindle, because, hell, I have a lot of those. I did mine in a format that was pretty similar to Dublin Core and then prayed that I had done it right, because it was hard, yo. I have to admit, I really enjoyed writing the synopses and the tags for my books (which were, for the record, the following: Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins, When A Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare, Hard Hitter by Sarina Bowen, Sustained by Emma Chase, and and Nuts by Alice Clayton, so basically, I owe you guys my grade). I’m happy to announce I got an A, and now I wonder if my library uses NoveList.
Also, the book club discussion was interesting, because I moderate a FB book club with some of my friends. We’re pretty open for the most part, although I don’t let people join if I don’t see a friend of a friend, because people are weird. I usually put up poll options for themes and then find books that meet those themes and then it’s whatever garners most or sometimes all of the books. I think we’re going to be doing In A Different Key: The Story of Autism this month. It got the most votes and met the criteria for two of our theme options for the month (autism awareness and history and memory). Thanks for this podcast, ladies. Also, I so want to read Born A Crime but I want it in audio, for the very reasons the guest listed, and my library doesn’t have it in audio (their budget is suffering a not a lot of audio is coming into the library as a result, but I WANTS IT). VERY informative.
I love the idea of a romance book club, but I’m not always one to break down a book into reasons why I love it or are meh about it. I do love, love the idea of it. I’ll have to look at the transcript and see if this is something I could put together or find locally. Because I need one more thing to be in control of.
The blog post about books that flip you off that Jennifer, what’s the actual title or link to that? I would love to read it.
@Chris: Sure thing! Here you go!
(Sorry about that.)
HOLY POTATOES! Pardon my outburst, but this is the first thing that popped into my head when Sarah said there’s going to be a LIVE RECORDING at RT ATLANTA. I did actually stop in the middle of a city sidewalk and giggle, and receive strange looks, and then attempt to reserve my spot immediately. I’m pretty sure it worked and I CANNOT WAIT YA’LL.
It’s going to be my very first RT and I’m going on my own, and traveling over from California. If anyone else reading this is going – maybe we could all arrange a meet-up spot? I’ll be at the intro first day for RT Virgins.
I got so excited in my last post that I forgot to talk about book clubs, per the actual main subject of this podcast…OOPSIE.
My friend and I started one here because we wanted a book club that actually focused on the romance genre – there weren’t any we could find through Goodreads or other local channels. I hadn’t thought of using meetup (Jennifer’s suggestion) – what a good idea! We are fairly small and certain members – ahem, my mother – try to push us into reading other, non-romance genres – but we’ve stayed true to romance! (I told my mother that I loved her dearly, and that I had given her the disclaimer that we wouldn’t be changing genres for her, and that if she so strongly desired to read something non-romance that she could form a separate book club that we all would attend).
There’s something so nice about being able to have book club in person, as opposed to digitally. Also, for the more introverted, it’s a great excuse to be around other people who agree that a few hours eating and chatting about books totally constitutes the maximum required social activity for the week.
@Demi
This will be my first RT, too! And, I’m flying down for by myself vacation for the first time ever. A little meetup would be fun. Get together over drinks or something like that.
I’m another librarian who uses (and pushes) NoveList as much as possible. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a good place to start.
I’d love to get a romance book club started at my library, but I’m at a somewhat far-flung branch and I’m not sure if anyone would show. I used to facilitate the regular book club at the main library years ago, but one of my personal problems with it was that I hate being told what to read. I know, right? What weirdo would participate in a book club if they don’t want to read what everyone else reads?
So what I’d really like to do is more of a book share than a standard-issue book club. Instead of everyone reading the same title, we’d all come prepared to share what we’ve been reading that month. Like an in-person version of Whatcha Reading? Our main library has been doing something similar for a few years, but I’d love to do it specifically for romance.
What do you think? If you lived near my library, would this interest you?
As soon as I heard what Novelist can do I logged on to my library site and found we have access! Yeah Seattle Public Library. I’ll be spending the rest of the afternoon exploring and finding new reads 🙂 Thanks for another great podcast!
@NancyC, a Watcha Reading in real life would be amazing!
I’m always a bit sad that I live in an area with a ton of Romance writers (and I’m sure readers), but there are no book clubs/reading groups, etc. here. While SBTB is an amazing community, I would love to have a similar community with people in my city.
This was a well timed podcast! The book club advice was very interesting and helpful.
Thanks to Sarah and SBTB, I was able to connect with other romance readers in London. We now have a group going and we aim to meet up once a month.
All the ladies in the group are so lovely and intelligent. And It’s sooo refreshing being able to openly discuss the romance genre and the books we love, without being judged or ridiculed.
We have had two meet-ups so far, and we are planning another meet-up for the end of May. It’s more of a book group than a book club though, as we don’t choose one book to discus, we discuss lots of books! So many books LOL! My TBR list keeps growing!
We randomly pick questions regarding the genre, our reading habits/preferences and discuss. This usually results in a huge list of books that we add to our group’s goodreads bookshelf (this requires someone to take notes LOL!)
We have a few virtual members too, so we have been adding the discussion notes to goodreads, too.
No male members yet (pun intended, heh!). Are there any lurking here?
Hopefully our group will grow over time. Vive la romance revolution!
@Jacqueline: I really hope your romance book club works out! 🙂
@Sarah: Orville is adorable, look at that belly!
@Chris Alexander
Absolutely! I’ll bet we can gather a little group here on SBTB. Will you be going to the podcast recording? There’s a link above in this post to sign up.
@Demi I TOO WILL BE AN RT VIRGIN THIS YEAR!
My hub is coming with because I got him into reading romance but we’d both love to do a meet up! *INSERT LOUD HAPPY NOISES HERE!*
@Demi
Yes! I did sign up for the podcast recording. 🙂
I loved this episode because:
1) I’m pretty sure my library uses NoveList and I’ve used the recommendations for my son’s (in fact, I’m about to use it again!),
2) I want a romance lover’s book club so bad. I’m going to read over Jennifer’s Meetup and mull ideas about starting one here.
Finally, 3) I help moderate a general book club, and we’ve had a couple instances of people taking over discussions. When they attend, nobody can get a word in — they know everything. Attempts to get discussion back on track are frequently detailed by these people. One example stopped attending after a few meetings, but now we have a new offender. I’d love advice on how to handle this type of meeting attendee.
Thanks so much for the lovely compliment! I’m so touched. I might have cried. I was making dinner and chopping onions, but still… Thank you, Sarah and the wonderful person who nominated me!
@Anna I’ve never run a book club, but I’ve facilitated other discussion groups. Every once in a while, I’ll run across these people. I also work with kids, and there are times I have to encourage quieter children to speak up and shush louder ones. Some ideas:
1) Say people’s names when asking for book feedback so the know-it-all can’t reply without looking rude. You could even acknowledge the know-it-all’s contribution by saying something positive about their interpretation/ideas and then ask someone else by name how they felt about an aspect in the book (could be the same aspect you’ve been discussing or you could change the subject). If the know-it-all still responds, it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I really appreciate your enthusiasm, but I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to share their responses to the book.” Then direct it back to the person you called on. I use this with my students all the time and it’s a gentle reminder that someone isn’t giving others a chance to talk.
2) I was in a book club that wanted to make sure everyone was able to talk, so we would start by going around the circle and everyone shared their responses to the book, their favorite and least favorite aspects, etc. Then common themes can be pulled out and discussed as a group. It’s an easy way for everyone to state their opinions before someone tries to dominate the conversation.
3) If you see someone who wants to contribute but can’t get a word in, it’s okay to interrupt the person who won’t stop talking and say, “[Name of person who wants to talk], it looks like you have some thoughts on this. What do you think?” You just have to keep inviting other people directly to contribute and politely reminding the talkative person that they need to give space for others.
4) You could try discussing for a some of the time in small groups or pairs, depending on the size of the book club. This way, everyone gets to talk and you could eve have the small groups/pairs tell the entire group their thoughts.
5) If the know-it-all just won’t stop, it is acceptable to pull them aside to talk to them before the discussion starts. You could start by complimenting their enthusiasm and deep analysis of the books. You could even frame the conversation as other people being less confident about sharing and ask the person to help you in encouraging others to talk and listening to their ideas. If that doesn’t work, being a bit more direct may be required as long as it is accompanied by some positive comments about their contributions. People in general are more likely to listen to negative feedback if they feel they are appreciated and supported.
Hope some of this is helpful. Good luck with your book club!
@Demi and others headed to RT, we can check-in and communicate on the RT app.
@Nancy – thank you! These suggestions are very helpful and I’ve shared them with my co-moderators.