Forming a book club: best practices?

[Anonymous]

A few friends and I are planning on starting a book club in the next month or so. I've never been in one before, and my friend was in one in her old neighborhood, but they never discussed the book, it was an excuse to go out. Which is fine sometimes, but we really would like to read and discuss books too. So, what is DCUM's advice on how to have a successful book club from those who have done it?

How often to meet?
What's a good number of members?
Where to meet?
How to select books?
Anything else?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

More than eight gets tricky. Six to eight is ideal. At least to me.

Get together and discuss the rest.

One thing in our group that got tricky was finding a date that everyone could make. Sometimes it's not possible. So suss out folks work-travel schedules, etc., and discuss what makes sense.

[Anonymous]

I recently moved away from DC but before that was in a book club that had been going strong since 2004. We just had our 50th meeting a few months ago. It is still going strong now too even though I'm gone (sniff sniff!).

It started off as a group of girls that all worked together but as well all moved to different jobs we brought in more girls which helped to have a bigger group and kept us from always ending up talking about work. We found that having 10-12 girls on the "roster" was good since inevitably people couldn't make it and we usually had about 8 people attend.

We initially started off with the idea of doing it during the week at a restaurant but very quickly evolved to doing it on a Sunday around noon at someone's house with it being a potluck. It actually was a lot of fun to host and if you have about 10-12 people then you really only host like once every year or two. Our group lived all over the DC area as well so we tried to get a good rotation going between DC, MD, and VA so that we were not always going to one spot.

We aimed to meet every 6 weeks or so depending on holidays/busy times etc. We generally did not go longer than 2 months but also didn't really go shorter than one month so that there was time to read.

As far as picking the book, we started off with the hostess selecting the book. But after a few really bad picks that no one ended up finishing, we started a voting system. During book club we would figure out who was due to host next (it was not an exact science but we more or less had a rotation so we knew when our turn was coming up) and that person would send an email shortly afterwards with 2 or 3 date choices and 2 or 3 book choices. Everyone would then vote on the date and book and the majority won. We found that offering a few dates worked well because for the most part it was usually evident if one date would be horrible and the other would work for most. Voting on the book helped so that if it sucked then we couldn't complain!

We liked to try to find books that either had book club questions at the end of them or questions that could be found online. That at least gave us some stuff to discuss before we went off topic There are a lot of book club websites with suggestions for books as well. We also like to try to pick books set in other countries so we could have a food theme for the potluck! We did several meetings at the Teaism in Penn Quarter if someone had a small studio apt and couldn't have us all over!

Also, several of the books we read ended up being made into movies so we did several movies dates as well.

Off the top of my head here are a few books that we read (some are dated since we read them years ago!):

The Little Chinese Seamstress (Chinese food)
Confederacy of Dunces (Louisiana food)
The Kite Runner
Never Let Me Go (fascinating discussion and now a movie)
Into the Wild
Suite Francaise (French food)
My Name is Light (Argentina food)
Kafka on the Shore (did a tea at Teasism)
Night
The Space Between Us
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hate
The Virgin Suicides
Atonement
The Shadow of the Wind (Spanish food)
Eat Pray Love (italian/indian food)
The Bastard of Istanbul (turkish food)
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Bonesetter's Daughter (chinese food)
The Persistence of Memory (south african food)
My Name is Red (turkish food)
White Teeth
Of Love and Other Demons (latin american food)
Miguel Street
Corelli's Mandolin
Holly Cow (indian food)

[Anonymous]

I started a book club that lasted a few years (disbanded when a few of us were pregnant at the same time). We found that picking a date/location and sticking with it was key. Don't try to accomodate schedules or locations. For a while, we spent so much time debating restaurants or what dates worked and when we settled on xx coffee shop and xx time on the xxth Sunday of the month things went much smoother. We had a yahoo group and members could suggest books and then we set up a poll through the group site to determine which book was read. I thought the best discussions were when we had 4-6 people there.

[Anonymous]

Agree about having a standard date and location. (2nd Thursday of the month, always rotating houses etc. People should be able to trade times with each other, but that's about it. major email chains about switching dates are a no-no. If not everyone can make it one month, so be it.

I would also say, don't have a book club where a few of the people are neighbors, really close friends, or related. It leads to mini-cliques, which I hated in my book club. I hated it when people kept talking about things where I didn't know the people involved, were inside jokes, etc.

We have a rule that the person hosting gets to choose the book.

I agree, somewhere between 4-8 people is probably the right amount.

[Anonymous]

How often to meet? - every 1-2 months, depending upon schedules and how fast your group can get through a book.

What's a good number of members? - no more than 6-8

Where to meet? - private home, coffee shop or restaurant

How to select books? - let every member take a turn offering 3-5 options and let the group vote on their preference. I copy the book descriptions from Amazon into a word doc and makes copies for everyone.

Anything else? - have fun, but beware the member who chooses crappy books no one else likes or the one who has to dominate every discussion. Choose your members wisely.

[Anonymous]

Yes, choose members wisely. You'll be stuck with the people for a looong time.

Another vote for picking a set time. First Saturday of every month at 6pm. Don't change it, ever, for whatever reason. If not everyone can make it, so be it, it'll be a smaller group. Host picks book 2 months in advance.

Host provides food/wine.

Enjoy!

[Anonymous]

Great advice has already been suggested. I would also like to add that I think it is best to try to pick books that are available in paperback. Not everyone is able to buy hardcovers or pay to download brand new books.

Most of the book clubs I have been apart of have ended up becoming 'wine drinking' clubs. Decide what type of club you want. If you want to actually discuss the book, great. If you want a bunch of people showing up that don't actually bothering reading the book, then that might work for you too but just be upfront about your expectations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great advice has already been suggested. I would also like to add that I think it is best to try to pick books that are available in paperback. Not everyone is able to buy hardcovers or pay to download brand new books.

Most of the book clubs I have been apart of have ended up becoming 'wine drinking' clubs. Decide what type of club you want. If you want to actually discuss the book, great. If you want a bunch of people showing up that don't actually bothering reading the book, then that might work for you too but just be upfront about your expectations.

This is what I have found as well. So I tend to avoid book clubs for thsi reason b/c I want to discuss the books, and feel like I am wasting my time if people show up and giggle and say, "I actually didn't finish the book," or, "I actually didn't even open the book," and everyone laughs and says, "ME too!" and I read the book in like 3 days, 6 weeks ago, after the previous gathering, and have also read about 12 other books in the meantime. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few friends and I are planning on starting a book club in the next month or so. I've never been in one before, and my friend was in one in her old neighborhood, but they never discussed the book, it was an excuse to go out. Which is fine sometimes, but we really would like to read and discuss books too. So, what is DCUM's advice on how to have a successful book club from those who have done it?

How often to meet?
What's a good number of members?
Where to meet?
How to select books?
Anything else?

Thanks!

I was in a book club when I lived in another city. There were probably 8 people in the group but we usually only had 4 or 5 per meeting which was a good number. We used to meet at Starbucks or other local cages/coffeehouses, places that wouldn't make you feel like you had to keep ordering or hurry up. We met once a month. At the beginning we all brought in book suggestions with a brief summary of the books we were proposing, like 3-4per person and we all looked at the lists and kind of narrowed down which ones appealed to most people. We made sure everyone got at least one of their picks. We set a schedule for the reading for about 3 months out so we had time to order and read the books. We were living overseas and had to get them shipped...

Only other tip is to go with the flow. Some days we would talk about the books a lot and sometimes only briefly before turning to other topics. We were all moms of young kids (and ex-pats) so lots of other issues to talk about. But I enjoyed the whole thing...the books, the ladies, and the night out. We are still in touch years later and it definitely revived my interest in reading, which I lost for a while.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of the PPs but totally agree with the other PPs suggestion to pick paperback books. Most of our members got the books used online or at the library so if we picked a really new hardcover book sometimes it was hard for people to get it. We could usually find a slightly older paperback for a few dollars used!