Book Club Blogs... How I Miss Them

On Sunday, I spent the entire day reading.  The. Entire. Day.  Can you hear the angels sing? 

It’s really not uncommon for me to spend a good portion of the day reading.  I read fairly constantly – articles on writing, web design, work-related such and such.  I peruse websites, check fb, and, yes, I do open up a few books during the course of the day – both reference and whatever novels I happen to be chewing on. 

But on Sunday, I opened up a new novel, fell into the first chapter, and didn’t come up for air for the entire day (except when I absolutely had to).  I’ll be writing a review of that novel to post on the blog sometime this week… I’m still savoring it.

Just that simple joy, of being able to read for the enjoyment of the story, got me to thinking about the old Book Club Blogs.  Back in my early blogging days, I hosted a few book club blogs, and they were a lot of fun.  I hosted one on the book, Lottery, by Patricia Wood – and the awesome author stopped in for the conversation.  Prior to that, I’d hosted ones for The Mists of Avalon and, on my first blog back on a community blogging site that’s now defunct, I hosted Willa Cather’s, My Antonia.

Blogging, as a medium, has changed considerably in the last few years.  I think that may be one of the reasons that seasoned bloggers have moved on to other platforms.  There just isn’t the same discussion that blogging once encouraged.  Now, people check in at blogs on their readers or through their email.  They page in but don’t participate in the same way.  The standard blogging principal five or six years ago was to encourage comments you should always end your post by posing a question or asking for feedback.  We looked at it as a way to start the conversation.  Today, the standard is to approach each post as an article.  Some bloggers even turn off the comments, so readers don’t see the glaring “0 Comments” attached to every post.

So, I’m going against today’s common rationale to pose this question.  Would there be any interest in resurrecting a book club blog?  I could easily just choose my own books and post reviews, but I’m wondering if any of the other bloggers still tooling around the blog-o-sphere might like the group discussion.

Thoughts?