Reading Group Sites

Thinking about joining a reading group or maybe starting one yourself? The links below will help you find good books for your reading group. Many of them provide discussion questions, information on how to start your own group, as well as information about existing online reading groups.

Publishers' Reading Group Guides

Publishers often make their guides for reading groups available on the web. If you know of a title that your book group plans to read, look for the publisher's name, and click on the link for that publisher below to see if an online reading group guide has been made available for the title in question.

Ballantine Reader's Circle

Bantam, Broadway, Dell & Doubleday Book Group Corner

Beacon Press Reading Group Guides

HarperCollins Reading Guides

Macmillan Reading Group Guides

Penguin Group Reading Guides

Random House Reading Group Guides

Simon and Schuster Book Club Reader

Hachette Reading Group Guides

Vintage Books Reading Group Center

W.W. Norton and Co. Reading Group Guides

Reading Group Guides and Recommendation Lists

Below you will find links to reading group guides that were not created by publishers. These can be useful if you don't have a particular title in mind for your reading group, but you want to find a book for which discussion questions have already been created. In addition, you will find links to web sites that contain recommended titles for reading groups.

African American Literature Book Club - The AALBC contains information about new and classic African-American literature.

Booklist Center - Includes lists prepared by authorities in dozens of fields as well as comprehensive listings of award winning books complete from the first year of the award to the present.

Book-Clubs-Resource.com - A comprehensive guide to book clubs, reading groups and reading group guides

Great Books Foundation - Great Books reading and discussion programs introduce adult participants to substantial works of literature, philosophy, economics, political science, and psychology.

If You Like... - Christchurch City Libraries in New Zealand have put together many lists of books, both fiction and nonfiction, that come highly recommended.

Novelist - (You'll need your 14-digit North Kingstown library card number.) Novelist has created an easily accessible set of reading group guides. When you get to the main menu, click on the "For Readers" tab at the top of the page.

Overbooked - A web site for ravenous readers. Includes author web pages, annotated lists of nonfiction, fiction and mystery books which received starred reviews, themed book lists, featured titles and hot lists of hardcover U.S. fiction releases.

Professor Brians Online Study Guides to Various Works - contains reading group guides and recommendations for classics as well as quality contemporary literature.

Reading Group Guides - A well-organized site that continually adds reading group guides in the following categories: historical fiction, religion & spirituality, award winners, memoirs, "books into movies," and mystery and thriller. The site also contains information about how to start and run your own reading group.

Book Clubs Hosted by Television Shows

A number of television shows have created their own book clubs:

Good Morning America's "Read This" Book Club - the reading group hosted by ABC's Good Morning America show.

Oprah's Book Club - Oprah Winfrey's selection of fiction, non-fiction and classic works

Today Show Book Club - This web page will give you information about the current selection for the Today Show Book Club, as well as information about other books recommended by the Today Show.