Support For Book Groups
Register Your Group | Book Group Picks | Discussion Guides & Book Reviews
Register Your Book Group
Are you in a local book group with your friends, neighbors, or religious group? Let us take care of locating your group's books and save you money! Register your book group with the library, and we'll borrow multiple copies of your selected titles. When they're ready, we'll notify a designated contact person.
What We Need:
- At least one group member must have a Bloomingdale Public Library card
- Book titles
- Number of copies needed
- How often you meet
- If any of your members need large print or audiobooks
Send your selections at least six weeks before your group meets or you can give us your list for the entire year. Please be aware that some newer or popular titles may not be available to borrow. If we can't get enough copies, we'll contact you to choose an alternate title.
To register your book group, please have the designated contact person fill out the Registration and Title Selection Form. The completed form can be dropped off at the Reference Desk or emailed to mjohnsen@mybpl.org.
Book Group Picks
The library has multiple copies of popular book discussion titles available for check out. You can check out one or multiple copies of a title. If requested, we can also provide book discussion questions for these titles.
Book Group Picks - Book Descriptions and Discussion Guides
Fiction
- Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale
- Backman, Fredrik. A Man Called Ove
- Bennett, Brit. The Vanishing Half
- Cummins, Jeanine. American Dirt
- Diffenbaugh, Vanessa. The Language of Flowers
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
- Garmus, Bonnie. Lessons in Chemistry
- Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library
- Hoover, Colleen. Verity
- Hannah, Kristin. The Four Winds
- Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner
- Hyde, Catherine Ryan. Have You Seen Luis Velez?
- Jiles. Paulette. News of the World
- Jordan, Hillary. Mudbound
- Kelly, Martha Hall. Lilac Girls
- Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
- Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko
- Mandel, Emily St. John. The Glass Hotel
- McCann, Colum. Apeirogon
- Morgenstern, Erin. The Night Circus
- Morris, Heather. The Tattooist of Auschwitz
- Napolitano, Ann. Dear Edward
- Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You
- Ng, Celeste. Little Fires Everywhere
- Patchett, Ann. The Dutch House
- Powers, Richard. The Overstory
- Reid, Kiley. Such a Fun Age
- Reid, Taylor Jenkins. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
- Richardson, Kim Michele. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
- Schwab, Victoria. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
- Semple, Maria. Where'd You Go Bernadette?
- Shaffer, Mary Ann and Annie Barrows. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- Skelsien Charles, Janet. The Paris Library
- Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway
- Van Pelt, Shelby. Remarkably Bright Creatures
- Zevin, Gabrielle. Lessons in Chemistry
Nonfiction
- DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
- Gottlieb, Lori. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
- Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City
- Obama, Barack. A Promised Land
- Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Yousafzai, Malala. I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World. Young Reader's Edition
- Yousafzai, Malala. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Discussion Guides & Book Reviews
We can help you find discussion guides and book reviews that will enrich your discussions. The following databases and web sites contain information pertaining to books and authors.
NoveList Plus
NoveList allows you to use a favorite author or title as a springboard to locate other authors and titles of interest. On NoveList you can also look up and view book series information, read the first chapter of many books, and read reviews.
BookBrowse
Reading suggestions, excerpts, guides, and much more!
ALA Book Club Central
Features book reviews, author interviews, discussion questions and more.
ReadingGroupGuides.com
Book discussion guides, advice for starting and running a book group, and interviews with book groups around the country.
Reading Group Choices
Recommendations and book group guides, as well as information for book group leaders.
Book Movement
Lists of the best books for discussion, based on ratings from 32,000 clubs as well as book guides and other online tools to simplify club communications and activities.
LitLovers
Reading guides, book reviews, and book club resources.
Literary Reference Source Plus
Full-text literary database covering all genres and time periods. It includes thousands of synopses, critical essays, book reviews, literary journals, and author biographies, plus full-text classic novels, short stories, and poems.
Publisher Websites
Many publishers offer reading group guides online. These sites are also helpful for choosing titles. Here are a few publishers to try:
Random House Reading Group Guides
HarperCollins Book Club
HarperCollins Reading Guides
Houghton Mifflin Reading Group Guides
Hachette Book Group Reading Book Guides
Penguin Group Reading Guides
What to Do When There's No Guide Available
This site has helpful questions from ReadingGroupGuides.com that you can use when you can't find a book discussion guide for your book club book.
Generic Book Discussion Questions
- What is the significance of the title?
- Why do think the author opened the book this way?
- Did the cover of the book give you a good idea of what the book would be like?
- Can you compare this book to any other books we have read in the group?
- Do you think this book was autobiographical?
- Are the male and female characters in the book written with equal depth?
- How important was the setting to this book? Could it have been set anywhere else?
- Would you read another book by this author?
- Did you like the author's writing style?
- What are the book's strengths and weaknesses?
- Who was your favorite character and why? Who was you least favorite character and why?
- Did you like the ending?
- Would this book make a good movie? Cast the movie!