For those who enjoy reading books, and enjoy sharing their favorite books with their friends even more, starting a book club amongst friends might be a great option. We’ve read many tips on starting a book club, but this post from Monica at TheYummyLife details how she’s managed to keep her book club going for 25 years.
There are lots of book clubs out there now, and there’s more than one way to run a successful one. I’ve only had experience with mine, so I’ll share how ours is organized and why I believe we’ve had such endurance. If you are in a book club and have some ideas to share, I’d love to hear from you.
1. Number of members. We’ve had as many as 18 and as few as 7 active members. You need enough regular members to allow for an absentee or two each time. It’s hard to have a good discussion with fewer than 4 or 5 people in attendance.
2. A regular meeting day and time. We have always met the first Monday of each month at 7:30 pm. That way we can reserve book club meetings on our calenders and schedule other things around them. That makes good attendance more likely. The 7:30 start gives us time to eat dinner with our families before we come.
3. Rotating hosts. We move from house to house for each meeting. We don’t plan this too far ahead, because often we don’t know our schedules more than a month ahead of time. We let members volunteer to host from month to month, and it’s casually self-monitored. I know when it’s my turn to voluteer, so I do. Every one takes her turn when it works into her schedule.
4. Email reminders. It is the host’s responsibility to send out an email reminder to the rest of the group with details about when, where, and what book has been selected for the following month. (In the “olden” days before email, we had to mail out post card reminders. Hosting got a lot easier when email came along.) We usually send out an initial reminder a month ahead, and then a second reminder a day or two before the book club meeting.
Get the complete list over at TheYummyLife.com