Books! Books! Books! Alberta Readers' Choice Panel

The past few days, theatre was taken over by books in my life! Certainly not a bad thing, as anyone who has been to my house could easily tell you that books and reading take up a huge part of my life. 

Saturday, I attended a Writer's Corner at the Jasper Place Library facilitated by Jason Lee Norman, EPL's Writer in Residence.  The panelists were the 4 Edmonton Authors whose books were 4/5 of the Current Alberta Readers' Choice Short List.  On hand were Todd Babiak (Come Barbarians), Theresa Shea (The Unfinished Child), Diana Davidson (Pilgrimage), and Michael Hingston (The Dilettantes).  Jason Lee Norman moderated the event and the panel answered questions about research, challenges, inspiration and how it feels to have your book nominated for this award. I was invited to speak as a reader of two of the books, Come Barbarians and Pilgrimage, as those were our first two #yegbookclub selections, and there were readers for the other two books to speak about those, as well.  It was great that the two books I had not yet read could be purchased that day, so I came home with two new books which both sounded like great reads and I got all my books signed by the authors! Can you say fangirl? All in all, it was a great afternoon activity.  I am hoping to get to a few more of the Writer's Corners at the EPL, and since the next one will feature Edmonton playwright, Chris Craddock, I figure that's a double-whammy of theatre and writing for me! The date is not set yet, but once I find out when that is, I will let you know! Voting is still open for the Alberta Readers' Choice Award so click the link and pick your choice.  There is also a 5th book by Calgary author Tyler Trafford - Almost a Great Escape. 

A note: for all you writers out there - it was mentioned that Jason Lee Norman's collection 40 Below: Volume 2 is still accepting submissions.  Check it out if you have a great winter story and submit!

Next post - more books - #yegbookclub number three!

#yegBookClub - Off to a Great Start!

Last Monday night, I poured myself a glass of wine and prepared a small plate of cheese and crackers and settled in for the first #yegBookClub on twitter.  Our book was Todd Babiak's Come Barbarians, and it was a great start to what I hope will be an oft-repeated activity. 

I pulled some of the discussion and wrote a Storify - so if you are not on twitter and want to get a sense of what the discussion was like you can check it out here. Metro News also did a story on it and you can find that here.

For me, it was a great way to dive back into reading.  I read a lot, but lately I have been grabbing a snippet or two before I drift off to sleep and having a purpose at the end of the book made me have a much more engaged read.  I was in Book Clubs in the past (years ago) and always loved the opportunity to discuss and share my feelings and opinions about characters and events.
What was really cool about this was talking about books with complete strangers who I could connect to by the virtue of the shared experience of the book.  Wow!  What a way to use twitter for engagement.

I hope that more people join for the next one and that this can become an ongoing thing. The beauty of twitter is that anyone can engage in the conversation.  There is no membership beyond participation, and even if you just want to follow the discussion, that is still being a part of it.  I like that we are starting with Edmonton authors, too.  Isn't it great to have homegrown artists whose work can be shared in the community?  That is not to say that all the participants on twitter are from Edmonton.  I know I had one friend from Calgary and one from Toronto join in the discussion. 

So on to the next #yegBookClub:

Book: Pilgrimage by Diana Davidson
When: Monday, April 14th at 8 p.m.
How: Read the book.  Log on to twitter.  Use #yegBookClub to tag your posts and to follow the discussion. Bring questions and comments and have fun.  I will provide some moderator points to keep us going if the conversation needs a boost (it's the former English teacher in me!). Feel free to pour yourself a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and please, DO NOT clean your house or dress up or even feel you need to put on make-up. Join the Discussion!

#yegBookClub - An Exciting Idea for Those Who Read and Tweet!

The idea started a couple of weeks ago, when a friend tweeted to me asking whether I was the friend who had been looking for a new Book Club book to read.  I was not, but it got me thinking.  I have been in book clubs in the past, but not for some time, and I missed it.  I read a lot, and love talking about books, and discussing them with friends.  With kids and theatre and my volunteering, the shape of my life has meant that I wasn't able to commit to a regular book club, but then I thought, "What about a twitter book club?"  I have a lot of friends on twitter who also read, some in the city, some outside, and twitter might be the perfect place for us to 'hold our meeting'.  So I posed the question to about 9-10 friends, "Anyone interested in a twitter Book Club?" and the response was overwhelming.  The first question was, "What shall we read?" I had been wanting to read Todd Babiak's, Come Barbarians, so I offered that out, tagging him, and he tweeted back! How very exciting!

So, this is what we're going to do.  All are welcome to join.  I have named it #yegBookClub because the bulk of those I invited specifically are in Edmonton and we are starting with an Edmonton author.  This will help us find the discussion stream on the evening of the book club meeting.

What:         #yegBookClub - a twitter book club
Where:       Wherever you are with whatever device you use to engage with twitter
When:        Monday, March 10th at 8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (or longer if we're still tweeting)!
Who:          Whoever wants to join the discussion!
How:          Read the Book - Come Barbarians, by Todd Babiak - think of whatever you might want to ask or talk about and flag the pages if you need to.  Pour a glass of wine if you like. I always enjoy a glass of wine at a book club.  Tweet in and use the hashtag #yegBookClub to make sure that your comment makes it into the discussion.  You can also tag @babiak so he knows what we're talking about! I will be preparing some discussion points if needed, but if not, we will let the discussion go where it will!

This plan gives you about a month to read the book and think about what you might want to talk about.  The beauty of this is that it doesn't matter where you are, you can participate and join the discussion.