Advice wanted for Book Club

[Elizabeth]

If anyone has been a member of a book club, I'd like to know how you went about it, what worked and what didn't. Did you all read the same book at the same time, or swap books? Were conversations about books casual or structured? Reply to this post or leave a message on my page. Chars.

[Christopher John Eggett]

Hi there, I was briefly a member of a book club (for about four weeks) so I can share what little I know.

We we're all instructed to read the same book by the group leader, and then met up to discuss how we read them and judge general reactions. It worked generally as a free-for all until there was a weighty argument to be had in which case we'd usually split up into our respective camps to discuss this particular topic. The Group leader is there to stop the meeting becoming somthing of a war, she (in my case at least), would always attempt to be impartial and force reason from people. For example if someone made a sweepingly general statement she would require that person to back it up. This would usually mean relating it to knowledge outside the text, or from within (i.e. quotations or referencing a passage) it became a group close reading towards the end of each session.

I also remember we all brought our books from the group leader at the end of each session.

Our system worked but it was a little slow, and occasionally we'd all agree that a book is so awful that there was little to debate, and so we would not move past the first stage of general impressions.

The most important thing is the choice of books really.

I hope that you will be able to close-read somthing useful out of that.

-Chris.

[Elizabeth]

thanks chris, v useful. i'm going to conduct my group on the internet so can nicely duck out of any full-scale literary wars!

[Christopher John Eggett]

Hi again, just had a thought about doing it online:

As those who live on the internet are often completely useless at getting things done (in this case it may mean they havn't read the book) i thought that if you wanted to keep it easy for everyone you could use texts found only on project Gutenberg.

Just a thought (what else could it be?).

-Cj

[Pete (Thed)]

Good idea CJ. I have started an ebooks section on Book Reviews for that reason and uploaded a few to get started. Other people can upload ebooks too. Once I have some support with the site (coming soon I hope) then I will really look to do more of this.

[Elizabeth]

Good idea, thanks. I will look up Gutenberg.

[Syd]

Hi, Elizabeth.

I am in a book club now with a couple of friends. What we do is read, well, now we're reading classics, like the last book we read was Pride and Prejudice. We briefly write down a summary of each chapter [I do better without that part but I do it on some books] then at the end of the month we meet and discuss the book's material, questions, etc.

Hope that helped :)

..Syd

[Elizabeth]

Thanks, Syd. I've realised, now I'm on the 2nd-to-last-page of my current Book Club book, that it would have been useful to make notes on chapters, since I now cannot recall exactly why I dislike the book!

[Christopher John Eggett]

curiousity asks:

What book did you dislike?

[Elizabeth]

'one good turn' by kate atkinson

[Robyn :)]

Hi
i was a member of a school book club for about a year. We read books and judged amoungst ourselves the local story contests, ect. The reason why i quit was probably because there was not much variety as to what we were doing each week. Hope that helps :) Byeeeeeee xoxox

[Rosemarie Short]

I was a member of a book club for two years, and I'm afraid I was terrible - I watched the DVD's.
(Don't just take that as me being lazy - if you read the book and don't understand it, the DVD can help)
We read the same book for two weeks, and then had an informal meeting to discuss our opinions of the book, and probably more importantly, what we got from the book.
Hope that helped.
Rosie

[Armida]

I've just started a Book Club online...I'll have something under my belt in a few months that may be useful. You may want to check it out: http://BuddhaBookClub.ning.com.

Have you started once since you posted in February? Any advise if you have?

Thanks, Armida