As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Running a book club
Kyougu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all, so as I mentioned before I run a local meetup here in Dallas. It's pretty much a "Do a bunch of random activities/things I think would be fun".
I been tossing the idea of adding a recurring bookclub event to my calendar of activities. I think it could be fun and would draw a different crowd to the group.
Only problem is that I never even been in a book club. When i hear the word I mainly think of people getting together and discussing the book. Is that it? Should I try to prepare discussion questions? What would you all like in one/have enjoyed in any you attended?
My first planned book was going to be Good Omens mainly because A)I already read it, and B)It's a fun read.
I been tossing the idea of adding a recurring bookclub event to my calendar of activities. I think it could be fun and would draw a different crowd to the group.
Only problem is that I never even been in a book club. When i hear the word I mainly think of people getting together and discussing the book. Is that it? Should I try to prepare discussion questions? What would you all like in one/have enjoyed in any you attended?
My first planned book was going to be Good Omens mainly because A)I already read it, and B)It's a fun read.
0
Posts
Not that its a bad thing if you get only get a few people, but if you plan for 5 and end with up 30, or vice versa, I assume you'd be in for a tough time.
I currently belong to a book club with a couple of friends from university, even after several years it is still fun, even more than before. But we are a "small group", of around 8 people, which allows some of them to miss a reunion and still have people to discuss the book.
Also, even if we have different views or opinions about several topics, we kind of like to read the same genres or materials such as classic literature, philosophical, social, political, some types of novels, etc. So you need to think about what kind of books your club might be interested in reading.
Choosing books is IMO, the hardest part of running or being part of a Book Club. Trying to get interesting/good books that are easy to find (I still cling to reading physical copies of books, as long as I can.). I have in several occasions just bought several copies of a book I enjoyed just to give them away, when the group was smaller, just to hear what the other members had to say.
We usually pitch in and order pizza or something, buy snacks and booze, hang out and once everyone that will be attending shows up, we take turns talking about our opinion of the book, no time limit (I usually take some notes, in case I miss something and to write about some other member's opinion I would like to talk about later.). We try our best to not interrupt, but sometimes is unavoidable. Once everyone has spoken, we openly chat about the book or some other topic that might arise during the night.
What I can recommend you is to set up a couple of rules, but keep in mind that eventually they will be bent or broken, so don't take it very seriously and have fun! Hopefully it will be success!
Number of people is iffy, mainly since meetup has the issue where people will sign up for something and then drop out/no show an event at the last minute. I'm hoping that with people having to buy and read a book that'll be mitigated. Right now I have it set up for 10/19 and already have 7 people signed up..was thinking about caping it at 15 to make things managable.
Also picked the first book, Good Omens. It's a favorite of mine and I figured it would be a light, easy read to start us off.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
The ones I've been to have all been held at 3rd party locations (bar, coffee house, pub) and not a home.
At 1st meeting I'd take a survey on what all people like to read so suggestions are something enjoyable and not a chore. Also you might consider rotating who chooses the book (e.g. next meeting John chooses what to read, and following meeting Mary does, etc.).
If the book is an easy read, is pop-science, has an intriguing synopsis, or is about to be a movie, more people will show--and I mean sign up, the same type of dropping out and no-showing will still occur. My group generally picks a half year's worth of books at a time, whoever's at a meeting late in the demi-year cycle will get to pick out genres, and we'll just sort of committee up 6 different genres of book, then an email goes out to book club members where they're encouraged to nominate books for each genre, then anything that seems impossible to read in a month gets filtered out, and people can vote on the nominees. Meetup doesn't have a good mechanism for removing members, so the membership number we've got reads something like 800 people, but the active base tends to be more like 50, with 10-20 people making it out to each meeting, and probably a group of about 8ish regular people that I see most months.
For discussion, we usually wait 10-12 minutes after the meeting's start time, where people just show up, hang out, shoot the shit, then we have everybody go around the table (or whatever), and say their name, followed by an answer to some sort of ice-breaking question related to the book or the season. After that, I usually just ask if anybody has any initial thoughts about the book or something they've gotta say about it, and let the conversation go. I guess I don't worry too much about keeping conversation on-topic, but I do get eye-rolly about people who monopolize conversation to go off on their own wild tangents that nobody else is participating in. It's fun as long as everybody's having fun. Also a good place to talk to people about other stuff you're reading, or get recommendations about what they've enjoyed. "Discussion Questions" are an okay way to get things back on topic, if you're interested in that, but if a book has it's own section in the back where there are "Discussion Questions," someone will usually naturally go to it during a lull in the conversation and it usually gets played for laughs.
As far as selecting books, if I were doing an initial grouping for a new club, I'd pick books that I haven't read, so that I could have the same experience that I expect attendees to go through--reading a new book in a certain timeframe. My group meets monthly, and I'm often surprised to find myself frantically tearing through a book the weekend before book club, having failed to make time for it elsewhere in the month.
Edit: Oh, also--make sure the meetup exists with it's date for at least at least a month (really two). This'll give people who want to do this a good amount of time to pick up (or order) a copy of the book and read it at their leisure. I usually take a few weeks to bother acquiring a book, and a few to read through one. Though our club does figure out and announce 6 books (each with its own month) at a time, so sometimes I've gone ahead and picked up everything at once, if I was feeling up to it.
On one hand not everyone has the commitment time to get through Dumas or Melville in 4 weeks to so they can be ready to discuss it. On the other hand what killed my wife's book club was that about half of the mid-20s women in the group while they read a lot and were several English/communications majors, are unable to handle anything not involving vampires/werewolves/ghost/witches with protagonists who were HS aged girls.
Yeah, I wouldn't start a book club that was just "book club", a more specific theme is better. Like if you go the scifi fantasy route, you could say every book has to be a Hugo, Nebula, or Fantasy award winner. Still plenty of good options, but narrow choices down so people don't pick so many things that really suck. You can broaden the category later once you have a good group going.