Friday, January 6, 2012

Guidance on Book Clubs Required

For the first time I can remember, I feel like I have a reasonable number of people around me, in my everyday world, including colleagues at work, who love reading as much as I do.

I began to daydream about starting a social book club.  This idea was only in its infancy when I mentioned it to a couple of people.  Very much to my surprise, those people mentioned it to a couple of others, and now, group shy me, is facing the beginnings of this coffee-shop-book-chat-get-together next weekend.

Note to self, introverts like me, should be very careful about mentioning random musings to more action oriented extroverts, unless they themselves are ready for action.  So my plea to you is this: have you been part of a book club yourself?  What are some good basic ideas for getting a very informal book club off the ground?  I am not a terribly structured person (that is why reading works so well for me, it demands so little) but I do wonder that if we don't have some sort of loose structure or guidelines, the group will quickly become more about sampling the various coffee shops in my little city and less about any sort of book chat.

I would love to hear of your experiences with social books clubs.  What do you find works well?  And are there any pitfalls to generally avoid?  Have you started one up yourself?  Or wanted to?