IRL book club

[ally]

I have been in a book club for about 18 months.  This past Monday four of us, those who have shown up at all/most club meetings, got together to discuss where we see the club going. 

For instance, I got to pick a book in August 2011 and my second choice will be for April 2013. That is a long streth as a member who has read every other choice (whether I like it or not) and participated at every meeting.   Our current system is if you are at the current meeting (and have not chosen in the current cycle - we have had 2) your name can be chosen to pick the next book and host that meeting.  We are tired of "fair weather friends" who only read/join us on occasion, but still get the same frequency of chooing books.  We also want to have books chosen farther out than one month ahead of time. (Ideally, I want to be able to plan my reading 5 - 7 months out.)  But, we struggle to know how to do that.  

How does your book club choose books?  How do you welcome the "sometime" member, without slighting the "fulltime" member?

[hopecounts]

I'm no help.
My IRL book club is very laid back and we do a consensus pick, everyone brings in suggestions and we do a quick vote on the suggestions and pick one.

My online book club has a sign up "sheet" and you put your name down for whatever month you want if it's open.
Maybe y'all could have 2 sign up nights a year and if you're there you get entered to be picked?
That way if someone is more fair wether or wanting the social aspect maybe they won't show up?
Or not nice but you could "forget" to mention it to some of the people who are less involved?

Balancing how to choose who picks can be hard for book clubs and honestly there isn't a real good option just the best of poor ones.

ETA: for my IRL book club to keep it from being a popularity contest we just put our choices in a pile with no names and that night's leader reads them out. Then whoever brought in the pick claims it once it's chosen and leads the discussion. 

[duckduck]

My IRL book club is very small-- there are only 5 of us, total. We're all close friends with at least one other person in the group and we've all become friends through the club, so we're usually all there unless someone is having a baby or gone on a trip or something like that.

We take a very laid-back approach to picking books; we don't have a schedule or rotation for who picks. So far it's been working out. There are times when we sit there and pull up Goodreads and pick something almost at random because nobody has any great suggestions.

[pthermal]

I'm in two. In one we just take turns. Whoever has a book idea can throw it out there at the end of each month. In the other I normally pick. I try to get suggestions from others but no one really suggests anything.

[secretlyevil]

We choose several books at one time (about three months worth.) We vote on them if there is too many suggestions. Whomever's suggetion was selected is the leader of that book club.

[AJL]

My IRL book club is very large. Because we have so many members (more than 65 on the eVite list with about an average of 20 participating) and not everyone makes it to every book club, we have a different book choosing structure.

Books are nominated to be chosen. We keep a running list of what books are available to vote on. Anyone can nominate a book at a given meeting. We vote for books two meetings ahead. For example, in February, we voted for the book for April's meeting. March's book was chosen in January. This gives people two months to read a book and to decide if they want to participate. Not every book chosen is everyone's cup of tea. We read a mix of fiction and non-fiction.

We do have some voting rules:
1. You can only vote if you are in attendance at the meeting. No proxy voting.
2a. Books that don't get a vote 2 months in a row are dropped off the nomination list.
2b. You may voluntarily remove a book from the list if it gets no votes at 1 meeting and you were the original nominator (this happens sometimes.)
3. If two books receive the a very close number of votes (i.e. off by 1 vote) or there are three or more books with the same number of votes, we take a run off vote between those books. Our nomination list can have as many as 10-12 books on it at a meeting.

We have two book club managers who manage the evite list, the hostesses, the nomination list, and our FB page. The nomination list is always posted so people can add to it or review what's being voted on at the next meeting.

It's worked for us for the last 4-5 years.

[writingwithheld]

In terms of evening out who gets to chose to be more "fair", you could institute some sort of attendance rule. For example, you need to have been to at least 3 meetings before you can start choosing books, need to maintain 75% attendance at meetings. If you want to avoid hurt feelings you could do one of the voting methods other people have said-- if you really wanted you could even conspire with the core group of four to vote for the same books the same weeks so in effect you could each have your book chosen on a more regular basis (assuming that the overall number of people isn't much larger). This could get sticky if other people find out you are plotting though.