Welcome to online-rare-books.co.uk - Information on Book clubs

Online book clubs are thriving as African Americans find places to chat about their favorite books and authors discover them as a link to readers who will buy their books.

Authors are thrilled to receive a review on Rawsistaz.com (www.rawsistaz.com), a robust, lively, influential online book club founded in 2000 that focuses on reading, writing and discussion of books primarily by African American authors. With its mission to "keep you in the know," the site (with national and international membership) features literary, publishing and book news, as well as events and a list of attending authors. It offers periodic spotlights and a quarterly reading list. The selected books typically include classics as well as current best-sellers. The group publishes several newsletters, including monthly and weekly book reviews, as well as reviews of children's books.

Blackliterature.com (www.blackliterature.com), founded by Sherri Sonnier in 1996, is an outgrowth of a weekly online book chat that she participated in on the now-defunct Netnoir.com. Sonnier says that she became more interested in black books when she found that there were authors that she had never heard of. Blackliterature.com features monthly updates of books and literary events. Features include an author spotlight with a book excerpt and tour schedule; new book releases, a newsletter and links to nearly 100 author Web sites. Authors can add their own sites to the listings along with their favorite independent bookstore. "We started at the beginning of the explosion of black authors," says Sonnier. "In the beginning, it was people communicating with each other through chats. Now it's more of an information exchange."

Like the Book of the Month, BlackExpressions.com (www.BlackExpressions.com) offers club members an assortment of popular books online at discounted prices. Black Expressions focuses on contemporary and classic African American fiction, as well as nonfiction titles, classics, books on relationships, children's books and more. Members can choose as many as four books a month for $1.

Black Expressions, which has been around since 1999, is just one of a number of Doubleday, niche book clubs. Voted "Book Club of the Year" in 2004 by the African American Literary Awards, Black Expressions has nearly 400,000 members, according to its Senior Editor Carol M. Mackay.

Other Places to Visit:

The African American Booklist on the National Education Association ([NEA]; www.nea.org/readacross/resources/afambooks.html) Web site is a comprehensive reading list of 100 titles that the site says celebrate African American heritage, tradition, and achievement. The reading list is geared toward children from kindergarten through high school, and includes titles such as Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Through My Eyes: The Autobiography of Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges and Bigmama's by Donald Crews. In addition to the book list, the site offers details about the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, as well as reading tips for parents, and other recommended books and tips for planning school-based literary events.

Ingrid Sturgis is the author of Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother (Ballantine Books, April 2004).