The Advertiser launches virtual book club today

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

So many books, so little time — not just to read them, but to talk about them with others who like reading, too. If this is your situation, welcome to the club.

The Honolulu Advertiser Book Club.

The club, launched today, is a virtual organization: No dues or membership cards. No meetings. And even if we do hold a live meeting down the road, it will be optional. You can participate in the discussion anytime by e-mail, letter or fax — from home or office, in the middle of the night or between meetings, wearing your pajamas or munching a musubi.

All you have to do is read the book.

You can even reserve your comments and just listen in on others, in print and on our Web site.

Here's how it will work: Every six to eight weeks, we will announce the name of the next book. Then we'll publish an interview with the author. (We are giving Hawai'i bookstores and libraries a heads-up several weeks in advance so they can stock adequate supplies. The Honolulu Advertiser Foundation is making a donation to Friends of the Library to buy Advertiser Book Club selections.)

You'll have six weeks in which to read the book and file your comments. At the end of the cycle, we'll publish selected comments and announce the next book.

An added incentive is the Burning Question feature: If there's something you wish you could ask the author — Why did you kill my favorite character? Why didn't they get together in the end? — shoot the question over to us. We will pick the most common and intriguing questions and get the writer to address them.

In dreaming up the book club — which, by the way, has been on our minds since long before Oprah declared there just were no books worth reading anymore — we settled on these criteria for our selections:

• In paperback (to keep it affordable) and still in print (to make it easy to find). No print-on-demand or e-book selections.
• Mostly fiction, mostly by living writers. (We will likely throw in a nonfiction book once or twice a year. And we may read an older classic from time to time.)
• In seeking selections, we will look for books that weren't No. 1 best sellers that everyone has read or heard discussed, but try to find lesser known jewels or "sleepers."
• Selections will be from Hawai'i, Mainland and international writers.
• We're looking for books that are both easy to read and discuss — beyond the genre or "beach read" categories. Cross-cultural issues will often be themes.