How to Start a Book Club With a Group of Friends

When you start a book club, you get to make up the book list and format the type of discussions, or you can opt to make the process more democratic. Either way, the goal is to generate lively discussions about thought-provoking books.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Books
• Bookmarks
• Snack Foods
• Literary Guilds
• Newspaper Subscriptions
• Library Cards
• Pens
• Spiral Notebooks
• Pens

1. Have a plan. How many people? Intellectual or light discussions? Best-sellers or classics?

2. Organize the details. Will you meet in your home, take turns in members' homes, or locate a welcoming bookstore, hall or school room?

3. Create a reading list before you find members if you want to control the types of tomes you'll read. But keep in mind that working folks have little leisure time, so they may want to have a say about how they spend it.

4. Advertise your book club via various methods, such as e-mail to friends or flyers in bookstores and on library bulletin boards. Get into literary chat rooms, visit online book clubs or put an ad in the local classified section, if necessary.

5. Network where you work, go to school, exercise or shop.

6. Create an outline listing the first book, the meeting place, what you expect from each other and a mission. For example, "This is an irreverent group whose aim is to dish characters, gossip about authors and muckrake bad plots." Or, "We will dissect this book in its original Latin to pinpoint cultural, political and social contexts."

7. Get together once or twice before the first book is finished in order to meet each other and suss out personalities.

8. Serve refreshments at the book club gatherings. If the meetings are at members' homes, rotate the location.

9. Read great books.

Tips & Warnings

• Making sure everyone is on the same page will increase enjoyment immensely. If Mrs. Augustus hates Dickens and everyone else wants to reread "Nicholas Nickleby," it's good to set the ground rules.
• Aim to have 8 to 12 people in your book group.
• What could happen at a book club?

[Delaplane]

on 4/23/2009 Good advice for how to start a book club

[Psalmist4M]

on 6/2/2008 I see this was written a while back but it is very helpful info. Thanks, cherylgoff.com

on 8/8/2006 Make sure that when you recruit new members that you provide them with as much information about the book club as possible up front. There's nothing worse than getting into a book club, and finding out that it isn't a good fit.

Consider a creating a list of FAQs that you could hand out to potential members, and make sure that it includes contact information. That way, a new member can make an informed decision beforehand.

on 11/22/2005 Remember that democracy is important in a book club. If you're a dictator, you'll turn people off.