2016-17 #3) Thing 37: Social Reading and Book Stuff

I have always wanted to join a book club so the Social Reading and Book Stuff Thing caught my eye.  Once I read through all the information, I was intrigued by the idea of an online Twitter book club.  I looked into the two  you mentioned, #SharpSchu and #2jennsbookblub, and immediately went to my Overdrive app to check out the books they both have for January.  I had to waitlist all of them, so I hope I get to check them out and read them before the chats!  I waitlisted them from the NYPL as well as my local MCPL so hopefully between the two of them I will get lucky!  I am clearly late to the party on these books and Twitter book clubs; better late than never I always say!  I made sure to waitlist the future books from #2jennsbookclub as well just in case - they have a list of books through the end of the year, however some of their selections are not available through the library currently; I will count on Twitter to remind me to check back (by way of following the four people behind the chats).

This is so exciting that I  decided to look into adult Twitter Book Clubs, since the two above are for grade school.  I love reading good grade school and young adult books, but I also am always looking for good adult books to read as well!  I googled "twitter book clubs" and the 4 top results

were very promising and I was excited!  I went to twitter and checked them all out.  I followed all 4 of them and then did some reading through their previous tweets.  I was super bummed to see that it appears none of them are currently up and running! :(  If you read through their tweets, the "newest" ones are from 4/23/15 (@thebookclub), 9/27/16 (@ALBookClub), 5/8/15 (@1book140), and then @Penguinusa had recent tweets, but nothing I could find about their book club.  I then went back to Google and searched them individually to see what I could find out but it wasn't much.  The only one that had some information (and recent use of twitter) was @Penguinusa so I sent them a private message through Twitter asking if they are still doing the book club.  We'll see if I hear anything back!

This made me a little nervous so I made sure to do a little more research about the two you mentioned - to make sure they are current!  I read more about them and then again, went to Twitter and followed the people behind the clubs to read through their previous tweets.  A little stalk-ish, but hey, it was necessary!  I was very happy yo see they are current in their tweeting!  Leave it to the educators to be on top of their games, not the book companies! ;)
I really liked that #2jennsbookclub keeps a list with past Twitter chats through Storify!  How cool is that!  You can check out their list here (bitly.com/2jennsbookclub) and if you notice, in their charts, they have a column for archived chats!  Such a great idea and it really helped me to read through a few of them.  It also added to my every growing list of books to read - I swear, I never seem to be able to make progress because for every one book I read I am always adding at least two more; a good problem to have I suppose!
Anyway, back to the task at hand! This Thing has been very interesting and I have spent way more time than I thought!  However, after all my researching and reading, I am still not quite done yet- I need to come back and comment after I have had a chance to participate in the Twitter chats!  I added them to my calendar and am looking forward to both later this month!  Until those, I am done-ish for now......now I just need to get to reading the January book selections!


Update, added after the fact:
Well...I am hooked!
I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the twitter chats (book club or otherwise) I have found to participate in this month.  I participated in my first book club twitter chat (#2jennsbookclub) and it was fascinating.  I also discovered #NHCSchat (http://nhcsdtl.wixsite.com/nhcschat) and spent an evening following this one.  This one is not a book chat, but similar in format - it is a chat for educators with a different topic each month.  There are so many possibilities!
Luckily I had read about TweetDeck from another twitter account I follow, so I settled in one night with Tweetdeck on my iPad, Twitter on my phone and a nice cup of hot tea!  I was pretty immediately hooked and started texting with a colleague telling her that we are definitely investigating how to use these live twitter chats for our work.  Her and I work to run our online learning courses for students across the district so that was one thought.  The other was for PD for teachers in the district!  We could incorporate live twitter chats into book collegial learning circles!  The night after my first twitter chat, we spent some time discussing how we could incorporate these 2 ideas into our work - either a book chat or just a general education chat.  We also did some more research into Storify because we will definitely need to archive our chats!  She is going to participate with me in a few of the future chats from #2jennsbookclub, #NHCSchat, and #SharpSchu.  We definitely need more practice participating before we can host!!
As I said, I am hooked and look forward to more research into this area of twitter book chats!  They are definitely coming soon to the RCSD!