Blog

Are you thinking of starting a reading group this year? We asked book club members to share tips and advice for first-timers. (There are plenty of great suggestions for existing groups, too.) We’ll be posting their wise words over the next several weeks, starting today with a slew of suggestions from Kellie Tropeano of the Massachusetts-based book club Mom’s Reading. You can learn more about them at their website, MomsReading.com.


Kellie Tropeano's tips for starting your own book club:

- Establish a meeting schedule early on. Everyone in the book club needs to know what kind of a time commitment this is. We recommend a monthly meeting on the same night. For example, we meet the last Friday night of every month.

- Establish a facilitator-led book club. The facilitator basically keeps everyone on topic and does her best to engage everyone into the discussion.

- Elect a "President" or "Owner" to handle the business side of the book club. Kerrie is our President. In the beginning, she picked all the books and hosted many of the meetings. Then she scheduled the rest of us to host and organized book recommendations and voting. It's a big job to do, so she passed her presidency on to Kellie in 2006.

- Use the internet as a resource. You can find book recommendations, discussion questions and study guides.

- Establish a rotating hostess and facilitator schedule. Our schedule is that one month's hostess is automatically the facilitator for the next month.

- Try to get book recommendations from every member of the group. Everyone wants to be heard. Even if it's a book you're not interested in, the book club can still read it. Some of our best discussions have been about books we really didn't like.

- Be committed to attending all of the meetings.

- Be committed to reading all of the books. Don't just pick and choose your favorites. The book club is an opportunity to broaden your horizons!

- Invite a few more people than you would like in the group. There will always be someone missing for one reason or another. You want to make sure you have a good size group, even if two or three members are missing. We recommend 10-12 members.

- Some book clubs like to stick with one genre, such as mystery, memoir or science fiction. We've found that it is most rewarding to read a variety of books.

- Plan fun games to keep your book clubs entertaining. Click here for some of our ideas.

- Keep a record of the books you read. We keep a journal that is brought to every meeting. Each member writes their opinion. We've also started keeping track of our favorite quotes.

- Take pictures! Your group may be around for a while. It will be fun to see how you all change over time. Check out our photo gallery.