How to Organize a Book Club

Video Transcript

My name is Jeanna Rock, and we're talking about how to organize a book group. The first thing that you need is someone who's in charge. When I organized my book, I was the NAZI book group leader, and what I said went. In the eleven years that have passed, I am so not in charge anymore. Everybody else has become empowered, and that's fine. But someone has to be in charge of getting the list of members, of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and printing those out. So you essentially need a secretary in charge of that kind of information, of paperwork kind of information. The other thing the secretary must do is print out a list of all the books that you're going to read that year, where you're going to meet, who's leading the discussion, and all that pertinent information, and email that out as well, or at least post it somewhere where everyone has access to it. The next thing you need to consider is what you're going to read. You've got to have some methodology of picking books, so as a group you need to decide how you're going to decide what to read. Are you going to vote on the books that you're going to read that year, or is each individual member going to choose one that they will present? So some method of picking books is going to be essential. After you've decided how you're going to pick your books, you also need to decide who is going to lead the discussion, or if you're going to even have a discussion leader. In our group, generally one person leads the discussion every month. But it comes a free-for-all after that, so it really doesn't matter if there is someone assigned to it, but sometimes it helps to have someone responsible for making sure that they read the book, and then having some questions that we can discuss. A location is also essential. Where are you going to meet every month? Sometimes we meet it--we meet in members homes, and that seems to work really well for us, but you might choose a public place like a library or a museum, or even a bookstore, if you have a large group and it's not an intimate group where you know everyone. Once you've decided where you're going to meet, you need to discuss how often you want to meet. Our group meets once a month, and I know a lot of groups meet once a month. It generally takes about a month to get through a novel. If you're going to be reading shorter things like short stories or poetry, maybe every other week would work well. I would not meet less frequently than once a month, because you still need that time to connect with your group members and to share their lives. The last thing that you need to consider is food or no food. Most groups that I've heard of do eat, and we enjoy that social time at the beginning of our group. We spend probably an hour just chatting with each other and sharing food before we actually get into the discussion. But if you're meeting in a place like a library or bookstore, maybe food is not a great idea. So you need to discuss that with your members as well.

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