Book Clubs + The Monday Evening Post

As I was going through the readings for this week - I realized that I have done a lot of Socratic seminars in high school and my undergrad, but have never been in a book club. Book clubs sound so much more leisurely, but I wonder if they still allow for some great deep and meaningful conversation that a Socratic seminar allows (or in my experience, has allowed).

I found the Mark Prensky piece from the The Chronicle: In the 21st-Century University, Let's Ban (Paper) Books to be humorous, at times annoying, but overall interesting. While reading it, I wondered if people reading about working on personal computers felt the same way. I don't think books will be forever gone, or that there will one day be a ban on paper books. I also don't agree that paper and ink are on its way out like papyrus is because we have a new media. Books we understand, and can take care of them and preserve them. Digital information is a wild card still. Maybe Prensky is going somewhere with this argument, even if he is going there alone. I think one thing can definitely be said, things are changing, things have always changed, and things always will change.

In class we focused a lot on how to create an environment for a book club or Socratic seminar that takes "you" (the librarian) out of the equation. Socratic seminars are different from book clubs, in that you need to have read the material before hand or else you can't participate. Also, you can ask more factual based questions, and pull more from the text (i.e. Look at this sentence structure on page 50). It is much more academic. Book Clubs remind me of more leisure, hanging out with your friends. The librarian isn't there to teach, or to quiz people on their reading comprehension. Rather, the librarian is there to facilitate and provide a great experience. A lot of this has to do with the types of questions ask, and  I think overall, feeling out how things are going. Part of this is figuring out when is a digression beneficial, and when is it detrimental. I get really excited about books, and discussing stories, that I think this is something I will have to keep in check!