one advantage of a 'book club' reading, even if its not a real book club, is you can find someone else reading the book..
i remember some years (20 or so!) picking up Joseph Waumbaug's The Onion Fields -- i started it, and chapters were good... but the book didn't make any sense... i was about to give up on it, when one of my sister's and my mother saw me with it, and asked how do you like it..
i told them i was about to give up, it made no sense, and they both said, "you're just about page 100 right? read a few more chapters..it will all come to gether, and love it..
and so i plowed on. By page 125, the book had turned arround. all the threads of the previous chapters, that seems to have nothing to do with each other, suddenly came together into a riviting story. I would have missed it, but for a bit of luck.
Sharing books, whether in an informal club, or in a formal one is a great way to read. every one brings there own experience, and understanding. oprah's choice of books might not be great ones, but they are for the most part interesting books, and because of her recommendations, you can almost always finds someone else reading the book at the same time.
Many of the oprah book club books have comments or afterwords by the author, some have a list of questions for discussion. sure they are fomula type questions, but romeo and juilette, is boy meet girl, fall in love, seperate, get to gether, and tragicly die... there are lots of formulas in fiction, it doesn't make them all bad.
