Mobilizing a Plan: Starting a Book Club

Location, Food, and Name

This links back to the why question. What image do you want to send? What are the expenses? Is there a way to subsidize cost? Is a goal to make profit? Is a goal to break even? Do you need a location? What’s the name of the group? How big do you want it to be? 

 

There is a noticeable difference between a book club meeting at your home and in a public place. Wherever you meet, you want to find someplace comfortable and safe. If you know the entire group and have common interactions with them, feel free to invite them in. Otherwise avoid inviting strangers into you home. Wherever you choose, be mindful of time. It shouldn’t only work for you, but keep an open mind about availability and mental awareness cycles. Meeting early on the weekend or late at night may not work for everyone.

Do you want to have food? Food is the easiest way to build bonds with other people. If you are making the food or buying the food, do you want it to be at your expense or included in the monthly fee? You want to keep the cost reasonable so that people aren’t scared off. This all culminates in what the feel and message you want to give the group. Do you want it to be more academic or more casual?  What’s the name of the group? Again have fun thinking of a cool name that expresses all the goals of the group.

Additional Preparation

I recommend putting together some discussion questions in advance before the group starts reading the book.This allows for more targeting reading.  If the book is broken up into chapters, give some questions after each chapter to stimulate thinking. If you feel really ambitious, you can create a reading schedule breaking the book down into smaller pieces that people can read when feasible to help guide them.

The purpose is to be ahead of the group and do a little bit of additional work so the members won’t have to. Front loading the books with questions once they are selected allows discussions to be lead but still open to the flow of the conversation. Don’t be too married to your questions but don’t come in without a plan either.

 

Blindspots

Ideally, you want to keep the blindspots down to a minimum but you can’t always prepare from everything. What do you do when someone isn’t that strong of a reader? How can you tell? What will you do to keep people feeling welcome? Are there any other options? Is the book available on audio?

How can you make your group as open to as many people as possible? You definitely want to run the ideas by other people to ensure things are covered on all ends. You don’t want to start a huge ordeal like this and find out you excluded good people. Talk about it.

Preparing yourself

You will learn a lot through this process. You will do a lot of public speaking. People will look to you for leadership and help with the simplest problems. It’s a very draining, yet rewarding process seeing things like this come together. You may not get the most people at the beginning but that shouldn’t deter you. Remember why you are doing this and keep pushing forward. Good Luck!!

Additional Resource: I Love Libraries – An initiative by the American Library Association, Ilovelibraries.org promotes the value of libraries and librarians, explains key issues affecting libraries, and urges readers to support and take action for their libraries. Ilovelibraries.org talks about emerging trends, and current issues affecting libraries around the country

Their post about book clubs HERE

Do you have a personal idea/plan/or dream you don’t know how to start? Leave them in the comments below or submit them via the Reader’s Choice page and I will talk about it on a future post.