International Book Club

June 22, 2020-Today is an exciting day; I’m pleased to announce that Pandamonium Publishing House will be starting an International Virtual Book Club! We’ll be reading books by authors from six of seven continents (If anyone knows of an Antarctic author, please email me, and we’ll add it to the list), starting with South America. We hope to help expand our reading diversity, and we hope to read titles that you have yet to explore.

Here’s how it works:

1. We announce the book on the last Monday of each month. This month’s read is The Alchemist by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho.
2. Each Friday, we do a virtual check-in on Facebook Live to talk about the book so far and what our observations and thoughts are, and we take comments and questions from readers. You can send us your comments/questions via email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com or by joining our Facebook Live event.
3. All you have to do is download or purchase your copy of the book from your favourite bookstore or app to participate and follow us on social media!
4. Each book has an allotted completion date of approximately one month.
5. Stay updated by subscribing to our blog, podcast, and newsletter at pandapublishing8@gmail.com. Send us an email, and we’ll add you to our list!

That’s it! Easy peasy! I’m excited to converse with you about our upcoming book choices, talk about the messages within the books, and chat about the authors and where they’re from. I hope you’ll join me! X LLB

Let’s Talk About Book Clubs…

October 3, 2018- Ahhh, book clubs! I will say that I’m a huge fan of them and the discussions that take place over wine or coffee with friends. A couple of years ago, I started a book club, and our first meeting was in the summer in my backyard; it was also our last meeting. We read The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of the book, and I hoped for a lot more from it from what I had read on the back. Sometimes that’s a problem, isn’t it? We expect the inside of the book to be as good as, the back cover. But, now I’m rambling. Here are four tips for hosting a book club:

1. Get some friends together and figure out what you’re going to read. What we did in our group when it came to choosing a book, it was the hostess picks first, then we take turns by birth month. If you have two people who are both born in the same month, the person with the earlier date goes first. It’s pretty diplomatic this way, and it also allows you to read outside of your genre which I’m always harping on!
2. Set a time, date, and timeline. You need to decide how long the book will take to read, how long the book club meeting should be, and when the book club meeting will take place. For example, your book club could take place every third Tuesday of the month, the discussion is an hour long, and the book needs to be read in a month. It’s easy when you have a schedule to abide by.
3. Choose a location. Again, what we did, was give each person a turn to host the book club in their home. If we were reading your book choice for the month, you were also the host of the book club meeting. Don’t feel any pressure to use this method though, you can comfortably host a book club at your local library or even a park, restaurant, or public place.
4. Get your thoughts together. At our book club, w decided that we were just going to have an open discussion about the book and the characters with really no end game in mind. Sometimes the questions got off topic, and sometimes we were able to really stay in the moment. What I would recommend this time is to have a list of questions prepared. Perhaps every member could bring three questions or subjects to discuss that have to deal with the theme, characters, or even the style of writing. You could also talk about the ending, the parts you didn’t like, and why.

Unfortunately, life got in the way of us carrying on our book club, and we kind of let it dissolve on its own. I’d love to start one up again one day soon, and in this day and age, there are so many ways to stay connected! Think outside of the box and maybe think about hosting a Skype-based book club or a chat room book club, but most of all, have fun!