Book Club- IRL

[hurricanedrunk]

I am interested in starting a book club with co-workers. I know a bunch of you have "real life" book clubs you are part and am wondering if you would share how it functions. How do you choose books? Do you rotate who hosts/where it is? How many people are part of it? Other things I'm not thinking of...?

[meowmaps]

Years ago when I was still in a traditional office job, we'd meet during our lunch hour. There were about five of us, I think. We'd each take turns picking the book of the month. It wasn't very structured but we enjoyed it. If I did a book club again I'd probably like a little more structure - prepared questions to keep us on task. I feel like we'd often talk about the book for the first ten minutes and then talk about non-book stuff the rest of the time.

[wesleycrusher]

I am in two book clubs: one is a neighborhood book club and we advertise on Nextdoor, but there is the same 5 of us that attend meeting. We have a set day of the week (like last Friday of the month). Everyone brings suggestions for the next book, which works fine because there are so few of us, and we pick one.   We rotate who hosts, and that person usually has cookies and chips (something small).  We meet for 2 hours, but actually spend very little time discussing the book, then talking about neighborhood gossip and life, then it takes like half an hour to pick the next book.

The second book club is a group of friends from college. There are 12 of us, although not all of us can attend all the meetings.  We rotate who hosts, and the person who hosts is the person who picks the book.  We have a facebook group, and the person posts the book selection along with a doodle poll of dates they are available to host and they go with the date that the most people can attend.  This book club meets every month- 2 months depending on the date, and it has been going on for 3 years now. We all bring food to share.  The host usually doesn't prepare questions, although many times members of the book club prepare some on their own from reading.  We usually meet for 2 hours- usually an hour to discuss the book and an hour of us BS-ing.

I live in the city, so we have a large library system- we don't pick books that are new releases or are otherwise difficult to obtain from the library since most everyone gets their books that way.

[Nonny]

One of my book clubs is through the local library, and they've been meeting for about 20 years!! I've been a member for 4 and this year we've gotten a handful of new people so I'm no longer one of the newest members (but I'm still the baby of the group, our oldest member is 92 I think).  This group is open to the public and we meet the last Saturday of the month (except when it conflicts with holidays) and the host brings in food and coffee since we meet in the morning. 

This one meets for 2 hours - first hour is book discussion (author background, how the host found the book, discuss), second hour is social talk or more book discussion if people really loved or hated the book.  It tends to go off book and become book topic adjacent, but the book is always discussed.  Always.  Everyone here wants to be here to talk books.  Related books and authors are brought up, people have notebooks or Goodreads and are adding more books throughout the discussion and after.  

My other book club meets in the evenings during the week, either at the host's house or sometimes at a wine bar or brewery (host's choice).  If it's at your home you supply light snacks and drinks.  The books are discussed, but it goes off topic much more frequently.  We meet for about 2.5-3 hours, and our organizer brings up topic questions she finds online on her phone to try to keep us on track.

In both book clubs the host picks the book, no voting. If you don't want to read it, that's fine.  For the library club you would just skip the meeting, and for the wine book club you'd probably come and socialize anyway. 

We also choose the books in 6 month increments and publish it about 3 months in advance.  For the library this is a necessity because they have to have lead time to publish promotional materials and make book marks, and for wine club we need to nail down people to host (people are really dodgy about hosting, and the 3 of us who always come don't want to always be the ones hosting it).

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I was part of a work book club once, it lasted two months and then we gave up.  We met during lunch at work, but it was me and like 4 men, and it just wasn't great.  Super disorganized and the guys who started it just weren't into it enough to make it work.  It probably would have been more successful if we'd met over nachos at happy hour instead.

[expectantsteelerfan]

Mine started through a mom's group I was part of.

We are organized through a facebook group. We meet once a month, and we take turns hosting. Every once in a while someone has to skip a turn, but usually we stick to a rotation. There are 8 of us, so we only host once or twice a year. We meet in the evenings. During the meeting, we chat/eat for a while (everyone usually brings something, host might have 2-3 things out and wine), then we talk about the book. Once we start getting distracted and talking about other things, we usually all pull out of phones to look at dates for the next month's meeting. Then we ask if anyone has suggestions for next month. The person who is hosting has final say on what we pick, so they can listen to suggestions (some members have trouble coming up with their own pick and like the suggestions) or override and pick something only they want to read.

I like having the facebook group too, because we post any thoughts on other books, articles, interesting book-related things on there too. We also often go see movies that were based on books together.

I will say, we've had a few members drop out after having new babies, and we've tried to be open to new members if a friend/neighbor/whoever wants to join. But the core group has been meeting for ~4 years now, so it can be hard for a new member to feel welcome even if we all try to be nice. We've had a LOT of people come one time and then never again. So I would try to include everyone who might want to join from the very beginning!

[pinotgrig]

I was invited to join a book club by a friend and made friends with the rest of the group. I also started inviting more mutual friends and we have a really great group now. There’s a good core group of 10-12 that come each month.

We meet once a month, usually at a restaurant because most of us have kids and that makes it hard to host. We each try to bring a suggestion or two for next month’s book and then vote. We use bookmovement.com for organizing since not all of our group is on FB.

I take the lead on updating the website and it pushes out invites and the book to the group. I also gather questions for our discussion and make dinner reservations. I do make sure to ensure everyone gets to talk and that no one dominates the conversation. We chit chat for a bit and then I usually start by asking everyone to rate the book and the I start going though the questions I prepped. The conversation usually flows pretty naturally from there and I fill in with questions as needed.

We’re all good friends now at this point and do a white elephant exchange at Christmas which is hilarious, but making a point to have people give general updates on their lives really helped us get to that point, so I would encourage you do to that as well. We usually do it towards the end but before we pick the next book. We all just go around and share what’s new and people share as much or as little as they want. It’s also a good way to keep people feeling included if they didn’t finish the book (rare) or tend to speak up less.

[pinotgrig]

Eta - So since is a group of CWers, ymmv on the personal updates. But it was great for my group, especially because I feel like people open up more in sharing personal stories related to the books we read which has really led to some deep convos.

[krystee]

I just started one with coworkers three months ago! I LOVE it so far. We started as friends, but we’ve become really really close since doing this. We take turns picking restaurants and a book, so it’s sort of like a restaurant club too because we’re always trying new places. There are five of us and it feels like the perfect size to me. We meet once a month. In really busy work months, we might go six weeks.

[krystee]

I should add that I joined a work book club a few years ago, and it was so boring. It was at work in a conference room so I felt like I was at a work meeting. The personalities weren’t the best mix. You had people who read totally different types of books (which is usually great, but Debbie Macomber books do not lend themselves to discussion). The one I started is a social book club of friends/people I enjoy whom I happen to work with, and it is so much fun. I knew our personalities worked well together, we like challenging discussions, we love food and wine, etc.

[mrspez07]

I was very reluctant to join a book club for a long time because I didn’t want someone else to tell me what to read, I’ve relaxed as I’ve gotten older!
Mine is a group of moms from my neighborhood and a few others connected to more than one of us. There is about 9 of us, we’ve had a few add in, and only 1 consistently is still involved. We seemed to all show up every time no matter what in the beginning, but as kid schedules get crazy, people tend to miss here and there. We do it about every 6 weeks, we plan the next date at the current meeting to get it on everyone’s calendars in advance and may shift it a bit as schedules solidify.
We used to pick a book by whatever was suggested, but now, whoever volunteers to host presents 3-4 books at the meeting prior and we pick one from there. We rotate hosting but it hasn’t been in a consistent order, and the host makes the main dish and the rest of us bring apps, sides or desserts. Kids are welcome but it’s inconsistent who brings them. We meet on a weekday evening. Sometimes people don’t linger, and other times we’re up late.
We aren’t great about talking most of the time about the book, but our conversations flow like a group of good friends will do, and it can come back around unexpectedly.

[hurricanedrunk]

Thanks everyone for the feedback on how your club functions. It's very interesting to hear how different everyone is set up. There are 3 of us who are interested and we have the opportunity to start things up however we want. I would prefer to have it outside of work as I think it becomes more social/personal and we're able to invite outside friends. 3 seems like a smaller number and that give us opportunity to include more people.

[wildrice]

I would avoid doing it at work, unless you want to discuss work topics. I tried to get a book club going at my old job, but I found it really hard to pick books because you want something that appeals to a diverse group but also to avoid controversial or potentially offensive topics. Not that I read a ton of either type, but it's surprisingly hard to avoid books that talk about sex, race, sexuality, politics etc. Plus I'd rather be able to talk about such topics but it's just sticky in a professional setting.

I am now part of a book club through meetup.com. We meet about every 6 weeks at a restaurant. There is a girl who "owns" the group so she picks the date and place. We always draw names to see who picks the book for next month, and then the picker chooses 2 books for us to vote between. So the person chosen in February will bring 2 choices to our meeting next week, and we will read that for our meeting in May.

The only things I dislike is that there is no cap attendance on our group, so it can get too large. We have a bunch of regulars and then always a few others. Also the organizer tends to pick expensive restaurants, which is a little annoying lol. But she has good taste so it's at least a good excuse to try new places.