Are you in a book club?

[hub1176]

I love to read and am thinking about starting a book club - are you in one? How did you find it? When do you meet? What do you read?

[granada]

I'm in a book club. One of my co-workers was in the book club, and when I heard her talking about it, I told her that I was interested in joining a book club, and she invited me to come to the next meeting. We meet every month. There are about 5 people who go regularly. One person is assigned as the organizer each month, and she's the one who picks the book. I've gone to a few meetings so far, and it's been ok. All of the ladies are very nice, but I'm looking for a book club that talks more about the book. They all know each other through their kids, so they often end up talking about kid-related stuff.

You might want to check out your library. You can either put up a posting there if you want to start a book club. Or there might be existing book clubs that have a posting for people to join. Or the library itself might have a book club it runs. I've seen an announcement for a book club run by my library, so I'm thinking about looking into that. When I saw the listing, they had already put out their list of books for the rest of the year, so it's a good way to access whether they'll be reading books you're interested in.

[Irish Elf]

Check with your local bookstore - often they will have them or know people who are interested in starting a club.

I'm in one through my cousin and it's very informal. However we tend to read heavy stuff (100 Years of Solitude, The Kite Runner, SHadow of the Wind) so it makes up for the informality. We always end the meeting by discussing books we are reading but that aren't necessarily book club material. It's great to get ideas about what to read (and what not to read ;) )

[framboise]

I'm in a book club. It's pretty informal & we tend to include a lot of discussion about work, celebrity gossip, relationships & everything else under the sun.

It was started by a friend of mine from college. She invited a handful of her friends, her sister invited a handful of friends & their cousin invited a few as well. So the most common link everyone shared was through those three which makes for a wide variety of people. It's been about 3 years now & some people have left the group & new ones have come in. We have about 8 or so people who are the real regulars & another 5 who come once in a while.

We started off meeting the first Sunday of the month but that has gotten a little lax & now we just figure out a Sunday about a month from the current meeting when a large number of people can come. We take turns hosting it at whichever home is available, there's no real rhyme or reason. Everyone brings snacks of some kind & we always end up with an assortment of fun things to munch on. The books are picked by rotation. Based on birthday order, one person will bring 3 book choices to a meeting & everyone will vote on them. Whichever one gets the most votes is the one we read for the next meeting.

It has been a lot of fun. Let me know if you have any questions about the way we do things. It's not the most serious & literary, but we are all finding out about a lot of books that we otherwise might not have read.

[kwsu44]

I am in a book club. My best friend and I started one, we invited friends from high school, friends from law school and friends of friends. There have been a core group of us that have been together for the last 5 years and we've only lost two members due to relocations.

We meet monthly, the second Wednesday of every month. (We picked this day arbitrarily). In the begfinning, we tried to decide on the book by consesus, but found this to be a pain. So, now the person who is hosting the next month picks the book that will be read. We determined this order by doing a random drawing of names.

We have a couple of "rules": try not to pick a hardcover more than twice a year, try not to pick a book that's more than 600 pages. Other than that, I think it's going great!

We've read a lot of great books over the last five years, and I think our favorites have been: The Kite Runner, The Red Tent and To Kill A Mockingbird.

[BSBC]

My neighborhood has a bookclub. It is pretty informal and we spend a lot of time just catching up with each other. The members are a mix of working moms, SAHMs, and married women w/out children. We have a specific meeting day (i.e., 2nd Tuesday of the month) and each month a different member hosts at her house. We do not really have a formal process for choosing the books that we read - some months a member suggests a book, other months we choose together. It is a lot of fun, but we often don't get into full-blown discussions about the books.


It is much better than a previous bookclub I belonged to. In that club, two women absolutely wrecked it. They wanted the discussions to be similar to a college-level English Lit class (when they read the book) and they would mock the discussions when they didn't read the book. The group dissolved after a year b/c none of the other members liked the way these two tried to dominate the group.

[kwsu44]

BSBC - I was in a book club like your second one as well!

[mom_to_zoe]

When I moved to this city, I didn't have a lot of women friends, so I started a women's book club. I just told every women I knew and liked about it, from work colleagues to my personal trainer, and told them to invite their friends. That was three years ago! The line-up has changed in those years as people have moved and had kids and such, but we now have 6-8 women who come regularly. We meet once a month or so and rotate hosting. We select the books as a group, usually a few at a time so we don't have to spend time each meeting picking the next book. We tend to read pretty serious fiction and some memoir as well. We spend maybe 1/2 the meeting talking about the book and half just gossiping. We are a mix of moms, married women and singletons. It is a great thing for me, as a WOHM and generally busy person, because it means that I see my friends (without kids and husbands) at least once a month. And I read some great stuff too.

If you are interested in being in a book club, just start one! It's a great way to make new friends.

[linda_loo]

How did you find it?
A friend and her friend each asked a couple people, and we had 7 members for about a year. One moved, and we haven't replaced her. It's a neat group. 1 is a widow who is 60 (a very young, hip, travelling grandma), 1 is married-no kids and 45, 1 is 38 with 2 kids, 2 of us are 34 with 2 kids and 1 is 32 married-no kids. I think one of the best things about us is that we aren't all moms and we aren't all working and we aren't all the same age - we get along great, but we have a lot of interesting differences. All women, which we really like.

When do you meet?
About 1/month. We always bring our dayplanners, and decide on the next meeting while we are eating dessert. Speaking of which, we think a key to our success is the liberal wine/beer flow and appetizers at 7:30 - that we sit and talk for like an hour or so, THEN talk about the book a bit, THEN have an oooey gooey dessert. It's such a great night out for me.

What do you read?
Twice a year, we select our next 6 books. We each pick whatever we want, without really a whole lot of thought to whether anyone else would like it (IOW, we don't worry about pleasing each other)... and since we all have different tastes, I have read some books that I never would have picked myself - and enjoyed them. I particularly enjoyed them because I could talk about them with friends.

We are the leader on the night of our book, and are responsible for looking up questions to ask/history about the author/book and in running the discussion.

HTH!

[postkalidurga]

I started an informal book club almost two years ago. I invited a bunch of friends and one of my friends also invited a bunch of friends. The membership was in flux for the first little while but has become a steady five girls. It really has devolved into a great gossip/support group but it seems to really keep us sane. Most of us are too busy to actually read a book a month so we alternate one month for a book and one month for a movie. We usually do read the books and talk about them briefly but then we usually get on to other life topics which sometimes lead us back to something that happened in the book we read. We are thinking about giving up movie night and just making it dinner since we rarely seem to actually get to the video... It was useful however in the beginning before we really all knew each other.

As for demographics, we are all married except for one (she's in a serious relationship though) and two of us have gotten married since the club started. Professionally, we are a psych nurse who is also getting her Master's in nursing, a family doctor who is TTC, an engineer, an x-engineer who is now a make-up artist, and myself: a housing manager with a baby on the way.

I love my book club :)

[Amuse Bouche]

You can also do a search for book clubs near your zipcode at ReadersCircle.org.

There are a bunch in LA -- I don't know how many postings it has generally.

[Brandles]

I would LOVE to be in a bookclub! But, the only people around here who are in book clubs are older, retired people. I want a 20/30 something group.