How To Organize A Book Club Part II

More Tips To Organize A Book Club

By Melanie Kindrachuk

Interested in starting your own book club, or making the one you’re in even better? Great! There are tons of book clubs out there and just as many ways to start and organize one of your own.

In our last post, we offered 5 tips to start a book club. Here are 4 more suggestions to get you going!

Have one person lead each meeting. This person is often the host as well, but should be responsible for developing some discussion questions, providing book information, and leading the chat. Some clubs have each person pick one book and lead the discussion for their own suggestion, while others create a book list from a large number of suggested titles, and then members pick a month to host and lead the discussion for a book from that list.
Encourage all members to finish the book and come ready to talk, whether they loved or hated the book! If only one person reads the book, it’s not much fun to discuss.
Create space for the quieter people to share their thoughts as well as those who have lots to say. Whether it’s going around the circle one by one, allowing people to read things they’ve noted about the book beforehand, or simply asking for the thoughts of those who haven’t spoken yet, make sure your book club is welcoming to all members
Decide whether refreshments are going to be a big part of your club. If so, what kind? How fancy are you going to get? Whose responsibility is it to take care of refreshments – the host, another volunteer, or are you going to go potluck at each meeting? Don’t leave it up to one person to always manage this element; it can get both expensive and time-consuming if left up to one person.

There are lots of ways to make a book club work for you. Remember to organize the details so that you can have fun with your book club!

Written By:

Melanie Kindrachuk, a Public Service Librarian at the Stratford Public Library. She coordinates the Library’s book club program and specializes in Readers’ Advisory – matching up readers with the book they are looking for.