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Are you a member of a book club looking for an easier way to borrow copies of the books you discuss? Have you always wanted to start your own book club, but lacked the time necessary to gather materials? Look no further! We are happy to announce a new service for local book clubs called The Carpet Bag Book Club Kits.

Each book club kit consists of twelve copies of a single title and a notebook filled with information designed to stimulate discussion. Author interviews and biographical information, book reviews, and discussion questions are all contained within the notebook that is in your Carpet Bag.

2010 Titles

Oldies But Goodies

Reserve a Carpet Bag
To use this service, we request that book clubs register with Front Desk Manager, Michelle Dover, either in person at Bud Werner Memorial Library or by phone at 879-0240 X307 and she will help you check out a kit.

Each club must have at least one member with a valid Bud Werner Library card. That person will be responsible for picking up the kit, checking it out on a library card, distributing the books to club members, and returning the kit with all its contents to the library.

Kits are checked out for six weeks and should be reserved in advance. If your group happens to lose a book, we ask that you pay a replacement fee of $10.00.

How We Select Titles
Carpet Bags are created with the book club reader in mind. We know you want a good discussible book whether it's fiction or non-fiction, therefore books are chosen that are provocative enough to prompt discussion and create dialogue between members. A chosen title will usually fulfill all or some of the following criteria:

• has strong themes, complex characters, interesting relationships or a clear sense of place versus plot.
• has characters are faced with difficult choices or whose themes involve a strong moral or ethical conflict
• are often controversial books. Some of the best discussions arise when someone doesn't like the book
• present the author's view of an important truths and sometimes sends a message to the reader
• has universal or lasting application
• are entertaining (book clubs are meant to be fun!)
• are prone to different interpretation by a variety of readers
• can be read more than once, and each time the reader learns something new

Origin of the Carpet Bag Name
Pre-Civil War America saw many people prospering and reading groups were growing in popularity. Magazines were growing in readership and people were carrying carpetbags, the all-purpose 19th century equivalent of a backpack.

The nation's first humor magazineThe Carpet Bag went to print, riding the coat tails of the humor movement of the mid-1800's. The magazine edited by Benjamin P. Shillaber was the first to discover and publish Mark Twain* and Artemus Ward**. The carpetbag and The Carpet Bag were on their way to both fashion and literary fame when they became a victim of the times.

After the Civil War the term Carpetbagger became associated with any unwelcome stranger traveling with no more property than he could carry in a carpetbag to exploit or dominate the war-torn victims of the South. Soon after the epithet came to refer to any Northern politician or financial adventurer accused of going South to use the newly enfranchised freedmen as a means of obtaining office or profit.

Fortunately for book clubs, we've decided to resurrect and honor the pre-Civil War meaning of the Carpetbag. The library wants you to be reminded of its usefulness as a satchel, while also being reminded that its namesake is part of American literary history. The Bud Werner Memorial Library makes available to you, "Carpet Bag" Book Club Kits.

*On May 1, 1852 the Carpet Bag made literary history when it published a short piece titled "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter" and signed with the initials SLC. To date, this is the earliest known publication by a young Samuel Longhorn Clemens, the future Mark Twain.

**The magazine hired a young compositer named Charles Browne from Maine who secretly contributed his first humor sketch to the Carpet Bag and was thrilled to see it published. Under the pseudonym Artemus Ward, Browne later became one of the nations most popular humor writers.

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