Do you try and cover a certain number of pages or chapter a week? Do you rotate facilitators?
What we do is choose a book to discuss at our monthly meeting. Usually we choose the book several months in advance. We don’t meet more often than once a months. We try to go round-robin around the members of the group so that each member chooses the book for a meeting about once every year and a half. Some people come to more meetings that others, so it ends up that some members choose more books than others. Occasionally we jointly pick a book at an earlier meeting and declare the pick to be a group pick, not an individual one.
The meetings are often but not always held at the home of the person who picked the book, but some members’ homes aren’t suitable for a meeting, so we hold it at some other member’s home. At the meeting for that month, we talk about the book. Of course after and before talking about the book there is almost always a lot of just members getting into general discussions about everything, including catching up with what’s going on in their lives. We don’t make a big deal about whether everybody has finished the book (or even started the book). People bring snacks for the meeting.
I’ve been a member of a book club for about 6 years now.
It was originally started with a post on craigslist, and we still get most of our new members that way. I’m sure there are lots of other ways to find a book club.
When we put posts on craigslist inviting members, we always mention who we are (a bit of demographic info), books we’ve read in the past, and when and how often we meet.
I joined a book club in my area that was specifically for young professionals and you would’ve fit in perfectly. About two-thirds of the attendees were quiet introverted 20 somethings who seemed like they wouldn’t care at all about someone being gender non-conforming.
The group’s shyness actually made it fairly awkward. The shy people would have to be coaxed into expressing their thoughts at all, which is fine, but then almost nobody would respond to them, which isn’t as fine. A handful of other more outgoing members and I would take turns keeping the conversation going or otherwise it’d just end abruptly as soon as someone made a new point. There were lots of awkward silences spent hoping someone else would say something.
People not being comfortable seems to be the issue in some of the groups I’ve been in. Sometimes I would just say something a little of the wall or something I knew would come off as kind of dumb (even though I thought they were valid) just to make people comfortable with expressing themselves. Sometimes the of the wall ideas end up being more interesting.
Bleah. That feels like homework. We meet once a month and everyone tries to finish the book, but life happens sometimes. Whoever proposed the book generally says a few words about why they picked it and what they thought its strengths and weaknesses were. Sometimes, if it was a book that they hadn’t read before picking it, they’d talk about how it did or did not meet their expectations. Then, everyone is free to comment.
My old book club would pick next month’s book at each meeting, largely by consensus. We would each propose options and everyone would opine as to what sounded the most interesting, with some effort to make sure that everyone got to pick at least some of the time. My current book club picks the entire following year in December, with each member picking one book and hosting the book club that month. I like both ways - the former allows for more spontaneity, the latter gives you plenty of lead time to find books cheap through the library or book swap sites.
Most bookstores also host book clubs, and will often give discounts to members for the book club books. Since I rarely pay more than shipping for books (I highly recommend paperbackswap.com), that doesn’t seem like such a great deal to me, but if you like to talk about the latest book from big name authors, a bookstore-hosted club is fantastic.
Urbanredneck writes:
> Do you rotate facilitators?
I just noticed this. Facilitators? We don’t even know the term “facilitator.” No, of course there’s no person who starts and directs the discussions. We start the discussion of the book by asking the person who chose the book why they chose it and go on from there. We’re a group of friends that like to read, not a class learning from a teacher.
This is actually not quite the norm from the book clubs I’ve seen in DC. I guess you’re a little outside DC but it’s still the general area. A couple of the ones I’ve been to were structured almost exactly like a class. I just found that so booooring; I’ve had enough lit classes as it is in my life.
My earlier complaints about people not finishing the book were more to do with the intellectual chest thumping I found to characterize the general discussion. Like, if you’re gonna have a really aggressive manner of presenting your point at least have a good point to make otherwise there is nothing really enjoyable for me about the whole exchange.
The book club I go to now is one that is very interested in getting lots of different views and exploring them - they don’t really care so much about if everyone finished the book or not but no one is trying to impress anyone with their intellect either; it is much more enjoyable than the other groups I went to.
I live (more or less) right on the Beltway, and most of the book clubs in the D.C. area are, on average, right on the Beltway in terms of distance from the center of D.C., so our club is typical. Some members live in D.C., some in Maryland, some in Virginia. In any case, our book club is not like most of the ones you’ve encountered. I don’t know what the average book club is like, since I never made an attempt at going to other ones.
Bumped.
I’m in three right now, each of which meets every two months or so.
The first has been meeting since June 1998 and includes people from in and around the courthouse where I work - lawyers, a judge, a retired magistrate and others. Our book choices have been very diverse, including novels, short-story collections, history, biography, science fiction, YA, fantasy, mysteries, etc. and, at least once a year, “pick your own book and come tell us about it” (PM me and I’ll send you our list or, if there’s enough demand, I’ll post it here). We meet for lunch and usually have four to eight people in attendance.
The second is a book club of my colleagues. We’ve been meeting for about three years and the book selection has been just about as diverse as the first. We also meet for lunch, but usually only have two to four come.
The third and most recent is a group of men from my church, and some friends, all interested in history and political science. We’ve only met once, to discuss David McCullough’s 1776, and spent (to my way of thinking) far too much time sidetracked on The Donald and the current presidential campaign.