If you're in, or have been in, a book club...

can you explain how the meetings go?

Is there a structure? Are there questions? Handouts? Anything else you can think of?

I am in a book club with 7 other women. Most often we talk about the book for about 10 minutes and then the whole thing degenerates into side conversations or general "girl/mom talk."

I am hosting May's meeting and as a once and future high school English teacher I'd like to dig a bit deeper into the book. I don't want to come off all anal and teachery , but it IS a book club after all. One of the other members criticized it to me as an "excuse to drink wine." And do not mistake me...I am ALL FOR THAT. But how do you think I can make it more of a literary excuse to drink wine?

Message edited 5/5/2011 5:35:03 PM.

Re: If you're in, or have been in, a book club...

I haven't been in one, but here are some ideas:

make a list of questions, and hand them out at the beginning so that people can read them, think about them before responding, and then there will be some structure to the meeting. If you can email them a day or so before the meeting, even better.

As for questions/topics--opinions about characters or choices characters made are always good. if there is something in current events that can possible be related, maybe say how would such and such character have dealt with x.... or something like that. morals of stories are good questions--sometimes people have a different take on what the moral of a story is. How the book changed you. whether there are pieces of yourself you want to change as a result of reading the book.

try to gather some reviews or articles about the book. pass them out (in advance if possible). have people comment on whether they agree or disagree.


Also--alternate endings. see if people liked the ending. if they didn't, ask how they would have ended it. or what they would change about the book generally.

Message edited 5/6/2011 9:55:53 AM.

Re: If you're in, or have been in, a book club...

My group has an "organizer" who goes online to find questions. I feel like EVERY book out these days has discussion questions at the end. Books that came out before questions were included often have them online. I don't think our organizer has ever been unable to find discussion questions, though most of what we read is pretty recent.

I just realized we haven't done this in a while, but it was fun- "Who should be in the movie?" and we'd talk about actors/actresses who could play the characters. It was always a fun way to wrap up a meeting.

Re: If you're in, or have been in, a book club...

We usually BS for like 2 hours .... Talk about the book for and hour than BS again until people start leaving.....

It's more like a drinking club that we mask by calling it a book club....

Re: If you're in, or have been in, a book club...

I dropped out of my book club awhile ago, but I remember that a lot of times it did go the way you decscibed. I think sometimes it just depended on the book. Some books just lent themselves better to discussions, sometimes whoever picked the book didnt come prepared with questions, some books we just didnt like and didnt want to talk about. And sometimes we just used book club as a way to catch up with what was going on in each others lives...