Book club

[lovelight]

I'm starting a book club with some friends to give us a reason to get out of the house and because it's always more fun reading a book when you have people to talk with about it...

Anyhow, anyone in one? I'm interested in the logistics of how yours are run since I'm pretty much throwing thus together all willy nilly. How often and where do you meet? For how long? How is discussion facilitated? In my mind, everyone would just gather and discuss, but I think that might not be structured enough for some people. Do you pull questions off the Internet to get a starting point? Just thought I'd get some ideas from the fountain!

[Mrs. MD, Esq.]

When I did it with friends, we would discuss the book briefly and then it would turn into just hanging out and drinking wine, haha. Usually, we would meet once a month, whoever picked the book would host at their house and they would prepare food and discussion points if they wanted to.

[Chrisada]

Just had Book Club last night at my place with my Mom's club. We have a coordinator who gets book suggestions from us for the entire year. Then we rotate houses each month. We actually call it the Literary Wine Society because lots of drinking is involved. Lately there is not much talk of the book though, which makes me a little sad. Last night I had a house of eight women, maybe two read the book and three of us talked about it for all of two minutes. People we at my house until after midnight.

[TigerLily]

We used to do a med student wives Bible study every week from around 7-9p. We would usually read a study guide for a particular book of the Bible and have whoever was hosting that week facilitate the discussion. It eventually progressed into a Christian book club, then a book book club, then a club where one or two people actually read a book and the rest just came to chat, then it fell apart. (big surprise) I think it fell apart when people started coming just to vent and talk about their problems. At that point most of the group couldn't wait to rush through the discussion so they could talk about whatever problems they were having. It was an interesting problem to have in a "book club" It was nice that the group was so close, but kind of sad for those of us who were really into the book! lol! I really miss it!
I think the key to keeping the discussion going is having a group of people who are interested in talking about the book that you're reading. Having a few questions to guide if the discussion starts to fade is really helpful too. Enjoy!

[Cinderella]

I used to moderate online a Middle East North Africa book club every summer. We selected fiction from writers of the region or books about the region. There was some non-fiction occasionally. From the list we'd vote on books we wanted to read. One summer we read twelve books in order from most voted for to the least amount of votes. We'd meet weekly online for discussion about the books. Any questions we had were submitted by members and discussed. Not everyone participated on all the books. I learned from that summer that maybe that was too many books for everyone to read and purchase if they couldn't get it from the library. So the next few summers we limited it to 5-6 books and spaced out the official meetings to monthly with check in threads on a particular book weekly. Sometimes we pulled questions for discussions on books from online. There is all kinds of "how to run a book club help" out there online. A book club is always more fun with more members participation but I understand life happens. Eventually I stepped down from moderating the group online after college. I don't know if it's still running or not.

[lovelight]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am kind of worried participation might die down or we will forget to talk about the books when we meet too. Love, love the idea of getting book suggestions for an entire year!

[GreyhoundsRUs]

You got a lot of good suggestions. I want to add a plug for Doodle.com. It is a scheduling tool you can use to find the best dates for everyone!

[lovelight]

You got a lot of good suggestions. I want to add a plug for Doodle.com. It is a scheduling tool you can use to find the best dates for everyone!

Ah, so perfect! I knew something like this must exist!