Chuckled when I saw Emma Sarappo's 'How to Keep Your Book Club from Becoming a Wine Club?' in The Atlantic, September 13, 2022. She spoke with her contacts on how to run a book club with the basic tenet of the club met — to have actually read the book in question. "Librarians, professors, and literary professionals offer their best advice on how to run a successful group."
The last time I joined a book club was in school. Even then, I hated it. Everything I envisioned a book club to be, didn't happen. I get that the chosen book to be discussed will likely never be the genre I'm keen on. Everything else after that, became a social thing that I didn't enjoy. And here I thought that book clubs are for introverts.
This scene is recognizable for a reason: Running a book club is hard. The format combines a social obligation with, essentially, adult homework. Even journalists who cover books are susceptible to this pattern. Like many others, I attempted to start a book club in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. I was home all the time with little to do other than read; I had a willing group of my best friends on board; we’d made a schedule and discussed titles. And probably like a significant chunk of clubs that had started similarly, ours flopped very quickly. We struggled to decide what to read, had a hard time meeting consistently, and eventually abandoned the enterprise altogether.
I feel that book clubs organized by libraries and bookshops tend to be more successful than those organized as a social event, or worst, as a 'ladies afternoon/evening social'. Running a book club is like running meetings. The organizer shouldn't be the facilitator. Well, you could, if you have a pleasant enough voice and you are a trained facilitator.
In this comment, everyone interviewed offered helpful suggestions:
- Be specific
- Picking the right book is important...
- ...But don't overthink it
- Nail down the cadence
- Have a facilitator
- It's okay not to finish the book
- The most important thing is connection.
Right. All very useful. I wouldn't hold a book club meet at meal times then. Even the matter of offering light bites put pressure on the host to have to cater to everyone's preferences. There's such a thing of potluck, but that makes people obligated to do it. Well, some people like to do this sort of extra effort things. People take it as something to look forward to. It's pleasant, I suppose.
When I got to the end of the article, I realized that my expectations of a book club differ greatly from the writer's. If I join one, it's really so that I could hear others' comments and opinions about the genres of books that I don't usually opt to read. I'm not there to socialize. Although meeting once in eight to nine weeks is extremely do-able. Most people join book clubs to socialize and feel that sense of purpose and belonging, and many enjoy meeting once in four weeks.
What I wanted from my book club was to come together with my friends, even though we were separated from one another by geography and the threat of illness. Even though we didn’t last long, thinking about the same challenges, mulling over the same twists, and showing up to talk about them was valuable. Reading was just a pretense to get us all in the same Zoom room. So here’s the last piece of advice I got: Even if your meetings come to an end, cherish the conversations you did have. The most important part of a book club is the club, not the books.
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