We’ve all been in one of those book club meetings where everyone stares a little blankly at each other, right? Where “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” is about as deep as your conversation goes? Those meetings can be excruciating. I’ve been in so many book clubs over the years. Admittedly, I have a tendency to want to take charge when I see room for improvement. Instead of ousting lackluster book club leaders, I’ve collected some observations about what works and what doesn’t.
When I’m at a book club, I’m there with a few different goals. I want to read books closely and with care, and a book club is a means of doing that with accountability. Hearing others’ impressions of books inevitably deepens my own, whether I agree or not. I like to show support for the businesses and organizations holding the clubs, whether they’re book stores or public libraries. And of course, I want to meet bookish friends. If you’re currently running a book club or thinking of starting one, I’d bet there are a few pointers below that you can use.
Not everything I suggest is of equal difficulty to implement, but I promise some of them really are extremely simple. I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit and ramp up to the toughest ones.
Get Club Members to Learn Each Other’s Names
This seems obvious, but it often gets lost in the shuffle. When the club starts, have everyone in the club go around and say their name and pronouns. You can have people add in something else, like a recent favorite book or a book they’re looking forward to, but you don’t have to go nuts with the icebreakers. Have people wear nametags or make paper name tents for the table if you’re sitting at one. Some of us are really bad with names, and having reinforcement is going to help.
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Incentivize Attendance
Don’t think stickers or progress charts are only for school children. One way to make your book clubs better is to get returning readers. The more the group builds trust, the easier it will be to have rich conversations and disagreements that don’t feel like personal attacks. Giving readers stickers to put on their nametag, or having an attendance chart that can come out for each club, will motivate people, I promise. You could even award badges for attending X number of clubs, whatever you want. I know this sounds silly, but I’ve seen how it works in more than one group!
One Person Speaks at a Time
This might be the most important suggestion of all. I know that trying to maintain order can make a book club leader feel like a school teacher, but when multiple groups split off into separate sub-conversations, it can be confusing and alienating. Frankly, being a good book club leader does mean using some of the classroom management skills teachers use. That’s the nature of the activity. The best and most natural way to do this is with a microphone. This has the additional benefit of making the meeting more accessible. If a microphone doesn’t make sense for your setting, you could take it literary with something like the conch from Lord of the Flies that indicates who’s got the floor. Yes, this takes discipline, but here’s the truth: undisciplined book clubs aren’t fun.
Facilitate Ways to Agree and Disagree Without Interrupting the Speaker
Related to the previous point, it can be helpful to have an established way for book club attendees to indicate they agree or disagree with the speaker. At one book club I go to, everyone is handed a laminated paper that is red on one side and green on the other. Attendees can register their wish to agree or disagree with the person speaking, and the book club leader can make sure the microphone gets passed when the person is finished. If visual cues don’t work for your group, you could use sound cues, like snaps and knocks. Again, this can seem overly structured, but people will quickly appreciate how the structure makes conversation flow more smoothly.
Give “Homework”
You can establish tasks that readers are meant to do as they read the book. These can be generic ideas to apply to any book, so readers can start building habits. For example, you can ask readers to collect sentences that dazzle them. They can identify a bit of dialogue that exemplifies a character. Ask readers to find a paragraph that they think nicely captures a theme in the book.
If readers know what they’re looking for as they read, it will be easier to be prepared for the discussion instead of feeling on the spot when they arrive at the club. The best books for these kinds of tasks are ones written by masters of prose. For example, S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes is so strikingly written and thematically rich, I would love to see what fellow readers pull from the text.
Get Online
Whether you use a book club app like Fable or set up a book club group on Discord, it’s a great idea to make sure readers can connect outside of the specific meeting date. While this facilitates the forming of friendships, it can also help the book club host. If certain parts of the book are eliciting reactions, you can be sure to bring those parts to the group for a larger discussion. A book like Sherry Thomas’ The Librarians, that has a mystery unfolding alongside some romantic drama, would be a great one to track reactions to online.
Tie Books Into Your Community
Book club choices are fraught. One thing for book club leaders to consider is whether there are events in your community that can tie into books. For example, a theater production of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is being staged in my town. Having a book club timed with that play will enrich the experience for those who want to read the original and see the adaptation. There are so many ways to get creative with this: think of museum exhibitions, festivals, astronomical events, you name it.
Curate Those Selections Carefully
I said it’s fraught in the previous point, and I’ll do one better and make a bold claim. The book club host should choose the books. Moreover, they should choose books they’ve read prior to the club with the club in mind. They can take suggestions of books from club members, but the decision of which ones get read should be made by someone who has the experience to know whether a book is likely to yield good discussion.
To my mind, the best book club books take big swings. Some people will appreciate an audacious story; others will be mad at it. Either way, they’re going to talk. As an example, The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa has a time-loop element to its whodunit story. That daring twist is going to be fun to discuss in a group.
At Book Riot, we track a variety of book club choices monthly. If you don’t have a lot of time to devote to curating a selection, you can read along with another club’s selection. We’ve also captured some of the pitfalls to avoid to keep your book club from imploding. Consider these dos and don’ts, but ultimately you’ll see what works for you and your fellow readers. Now get out there and create community.
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