Book Salon is a SERIOuSLY UNSTuFFY online community engaging Stanford alumni and friends in intellectual conversations about great works of literature, both new and old.
Stanford faculty select their favorite books to share with Stanford alumni, parents, and friends. The wide variety of topics means that sometimes you’ll love the books and sometimes they’ll feel like a stretch, but your brain will always be inspired by our respectful intellectual discourse.
At the beginning of each month, we interview the professor and make the audio and transcript available online. The hosting professor also provides discussion questions to get the conversation rolling, and our online moderator will dig up additional resources to round out your reading experience.
At its bare minimum, Stanford Book Salon provides book recommendations you can explore. For a richer experience, dive into materials about the book. When you join the community, you’ll gain insight into the professor’s perspective, discover new questions, and gain access to our online discussion with the Stanford community.
The short answer is that you’re taking a gamble and we appreciate your trust in our selection process. In an effort to expose ourselves to books we wouldn’t normally read, we take some chances.
We’ve read graphic novels (Persepolis – a story of an Iranian upbringing during the Cultural Revolution), classics (The Iliad – hosted by the Stanford professor who wrote the notes in Richmond Lattimore’s famous translation), plays (Arcadia – by Tom Stoppard and King Lear by William Shakespeare), and popular fiction both locally grown (A Working Theory of Love by Stanford lecturer for the Creative Writing Program, Scott Hutchins) and from further afield (The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith).
We believe there is a time and a place for every book, but we do promise that you won’t find Christian Grey or battles between vampires and werewolves on the pages of any of our selections.
We appreciate your book suggestions, but we leave the final decisions to our faculty hosts. Our goal is to provide them the opportunity to share their favorite books with you.
We get it. Not every book is for every reader. That’s part of what makes the world go around. If you read the book and don’t like it, we would still love for you to be part of the discussion and respectfully share your perspective. Other readers might feel the same way and benefit from hearing your thoughts.
We’re also not going to judge you for judging a book by its cover. If you just know you’re going to hate something we’ve selected, we won’t be offended if you don’t read it. You don’t even have to follow the conversation, if you don’t want to. It’s easy to put your updates on hold and we hope you’ll give us another shot when we start the next book at the end of the month.
We’re not like the cell phone companies or that newsletter on health that promised to teach you the secrets of your perfect diet, so you signed up, and now they won’t let you off their email list no matter how many times you click unsubscribe. You can control how often you get emails, if at all, and you can sign up for only the discussions and books that interest you. For instructions, see below.
Book Salon is designed so that, once you sign up, all you have to think about is the next chapter. The over 7,000 followers might sounds intimidating at first, but there are a number of easy ways to get involved - you don’t need to post regularly to be a part of the group.
Email announcements– If you only want to receive our monthly updates when we start a new book, this is the list for you. See below: How do I join?
Book Salon Discussion - To receive questions from the faculty host, book salon moderator and other alumni and friends, join the discussion. The easiest way to start is to simply subscribe to the discussion page and follow the posts in your own time. See below: How do I join?
You may also control how often we send you email updates. See below: What if I change my mind about email preferences?
Online Access Only – If you are email averse, you may also go to the discussion page, click on the most recent book, and read only the posts that interest you. We have all of our archives listed on the Book Salon page, and you are welcome to look back through discussions of your favorite books from the past.
If you use email, just send an email to the address that sends you the discussion topics. Likely, it will be the name of the book we are currently reading @discussions.stanford.edu. Whatever you put as the Subject of your email will be the Heading of your post on the webpage.
If you are looking at the web page, just click the green box that says: New Post
TO REPLY
If you have received an email, and want to reply to a comment, all you have to do is reply to the email and it will be sent to the group. It will also be included on the webpage underneath the original post.
If you are looking directly at the webpage, just click the red words at the bottom of the post that say: Reply All.
Please note that posts and replies to the group will go out to the over 2,000 members who have subscribed to receive the discussion post updates.
Join the discussion by simply clicking the "join" button here. After you log in, click the green buttons that read: Subscribe (under email announcements – informs you monthly of upcoming books and general news) or Join Discussion (under Book Salon Discussion – which subscribes you to the individual discussions on a specific book). You’ll answer a few questions about how often you want to receive updates and your preferred email address and everything else will come through your email inbox.
If you are not already a member of our community, or do not have a login, see below.
You don’t need to have attended Stanford University to participate, but you do need to be part of our community. To do this, go to the login page here and click on "Sign up now" (in the middle of the page) to get started.
You can choose to receive e-mail notifications weekly, daily or in real time. You can also opt out of notifications at any time, just as we promised above.
To set your preferences, visit "my account" in the upper right hand corner of the Stanford Alumni Association webpage. In the right hand column under Messaging Summary, click "update your messaging preferences." You will see three tabs halfway down the page. Under the discussions tab, you will see a listing of all the book discussions you follow. Use the drop-down box to the right of the discussion to select your frequency preferences.
You may unsubscribe from the email announcements or online discussion at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link found on the footer of every discussion post sent to your personal email. You may also click Unsubscribe or Leave Discussion on the same page where you originally joined. If you're having any trouble, please email us and we are happy to help.
Unfortunately, we no longer host in-person events for Book Salon. This online community thrives by enabling readers to connect with each other on all corners of the globe from the comfort of their own couch.
Please stay on topic and introduce information relevant to the discussion (historical facts, book background, related authors/subjects, themes, characters, etc). The online discussion is a book club meeting, where everyone has shown up to talk about the book.
Please only reply if you have something new to add to the discussion. We all want to hear your thoughts on the readings, but empty messages like, “I agree” or “me, too” or even, “so excited to start reading!” just clog inboxes. Many alumni have shared that they really love the book discussion, but unsubscribed due to an increase in these “empty” messages. Generally, in online discussions, silence implies agreement. The corollary to the above rule, for our improv lovers, is when you are saying, “yes, I agree and… here’s some new information that furthers the point.”
If you have a reply specifically for the sender of the message, go ahead and reply just to that individual (you will see their name in the To: section of your email heading). Save replies to the forum for when messages are relevant to the public discussion. You are always welcome to tell the individual how much you agree with them or how brilliantly you think their comment was crafted.
Feel free to share your ideas and Stanford experiences and remember this is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, soliciting, etc; please use your best judgment.
Please remember to be respectful of the ideas and thoughts posted by others; even when they vary widely from your own. This is a place for intellectual debate of ideas about literature, not a place for personal attacks or political vitriol. We encourage all discussion participation and love nothing more than to hear from someone new. Our faculty hosts are so excited to share their favorite books with you, and this is a perfect forum to share your insight into literature.
