How to Facilitate a Book Club

Video Transcript

"I'm Jeanna Rock, and we're discussing how to facilitate a book discussion. First of all, read the book. It's hard to have a discussion when you haven't finished reading the book. And it's really important that all the members of your book group read it as well. We've had moments in our book group when no one read the book, and it's kind of hard to have a discussion. I mean, it's fun to get together and chat, but you can't really talk about much. Second of all, make sure that you write down page numbers of important passages in the book that were striking to you. You want to have something to lead the group to so that you can have a discussion. Come up with about eight to ten discussion questions. And good places to find those are on pinkmonkey.com, or at sparknotes.com, or any--a lot of websites will have discussion questions. The back of your book will quite often have readers reading group discussion questions as well, so check there as well. Pretend like you're an English teacher and ask your question and then let other people speak. Make sure that everybody participates in your group, because there are some people that will be more quiet than others, and some that have a tendency to monopolize a conversation, so you want to have everyone participate and voice their ideas about the discussion topic as well. Make sure that you're in charge and that you don't go off on tangents. I know that in our group, we could probably spend an hour on a topic that has nothing to do with the book. So as the teacher of the group, make sure that no one gets too far off topic, unless that's where you want to go. Remember, you don't have to cover all the questions in the book, but make sure that you get to the essential ones, and then you can have your discussion afterwards."