For the longest time, I thought my books clubs were the only
ones that had problems. Then I bumped
into a friend’s Facebook status, wherein she said (roughly):
“Time to go to my book club, where we will sit around, drink
wine, and not talk about the book none of us finished.”
And that was when I knew that book clubs are, in general, a
bit of a train wreck.
Now, granted, there might be a few really excellent book
clubs out there, where everyone shows up on time, everyone has read the book
from cover to cover, and the person who picked the book has put together a
half-dozen questions that lead to lively, free-change chatting about themes of
the book, the meaning of life, and so on.
I imagine most of these are populated by retirees with a lot
of free time.
Having been in three book clubs that worked to varying
degrees, however, I think there are ways that the average book club can at
least approach a certain level of success.
About half of these I’m straight-out thieving from the woman who ran two
of my book clubs.
Though I feel I must emphasize that even with these in
place, the book clubs kept falling apart.
But I think that had a lot to do with these rules slipping over
time. And once the rules were gone, the
book club croaked with them.
Let us proceed.
First: Put a cap on
book length. Before I joined my first
book club, the club in question had already imploded once before, because
people gave little or no thought to how big the book should be. At one point, someone chose the entire Lord
of the Rings trilogy. That’s over 1000
pages of reading, and everyone had a month to accomplish it. Needless to say, this book was the most often
cited as the one that crushed the club.
A similar problem hit my third book club, when someone
suggested everyone read the book 1491, which covers the history of America Columbus
No one read it except the guy who suggested it, and someone
who found it in audiobook format. Book
length fail.
The original cap for the books was supposed to be 250 pages,
but I think even that might be too long.
I’m quite sure there are a few hundred books under 200 pages. I would start there.
And I repeat. No
drifting. 255 pages is probably
okay. But the very second someone
suggests a 300-pager, nip it in the bud.
Second: Pick books that people might actually enjoy
reading. Fahrenheit 451 is perfect,
because it’s a classic that has an actual story and interesting themes besides.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a terrible
choice, because it’s boring, scattered, and reads like a series of emo blogs
written by a pretentious teenager.
Most of the true book fails seemed to occur when someone
would pick the title of a book pretty much out of a hat because it sounded
interesting, without ever laying eyes on the actual book. To that end, there should probably be a
sub-rule that before picking a book, the person making the selection first must
read the opening 10 or 20 pages.
(Two quick stories about Portrait. The book was so bad only two people at the
club actually read it. This led to no
discussion at all, and the book club went to a movie instead. The Godfather of Green
Bay Wisconsin
(Second story: The guy who chose Portrait later made up for
it by choosing The Cat in the Hat. There
a massive annotated book about Cat. I
wholeheartedly endorse talking about this book at your club.)
Third: Someone needs
to be the leader. And that leader needs
to send out reminders about the club night (and the book title) two weeks in
advance, and one week in advance.
And then, the leader must find out who has actually read the
book at that juncture. If there’s a week
to go and the answer is “no one?” The
club needs to be pushed off to another month.
The thing of it is, all of this needs to be handled well in
advance, and between Facebook, email, and texting, it should be an easy
thing. But our clubs were constantly
plagued with messages like, “Are we still meeting? What’s the date again? I haven’t been able to get my hands on the
book!”
Fourth: Pick a meeting place, and make it the permanent
meeting place.
Another troublesome question: “Where are we meeting?”
The thing of it is, yes, it’s nice for people to share the
responsibility of hosting, but in reality, it just sucks. Every month, you have to send out a new set
of directions. The distance might be
impossible for some of the book club members.
(In one case, we had a 45 minute drive, it was winter, it was dark, and
we had a little one. Needless to say,
that did not happen.)
By meeting in the same place every month, everyone knows how
long it takes to get there as well, so no one is arriving 30 minutes late and
horking up the discussion.
Fifth: Food. There
needs to be food.
We did this kind of thing a few ways. There were themed meals to go with the books,
which was fun but could be a lot of work.
Honestly, I’d say either meet up at a restaurant where it’s
quiet enough to talk, or order pizza.
Potluck kind of works, but gets problematic in the main course area,
which means someone is going to do a lot of work and probably spend way more
than the person who brings a bag of chips.
Pizza, I say.
Sixth: Make sure the book is easy to get your hands on.
On a couple of occasions, people picked books that were
available free online. Which is great,
except most of us didn’t have Kindles or iPads, and subsequently no one wanted
to read the book online.
Some of these were so-called classics, which meant the
library had one copy. So one person got
that, and everyone else had to pay money for a book they were only going to
read once, if at all.
Finally, feel the need to once again suggest that the books
selected are books that the people in the club actually want to read. Yes, it can be “interesting” to do classics,
but more often than not it gets frustrating and dull quickly.
I was once in a Jane Austen book club, and the thing of it
is, she only wrote six books. But they
were all torture, and in the end a club that started with ten members slowly
shrunk to four.
I’ll grant you that not every book is going to please every
person. However, people in book clubs
are far too prone to picking books that go down like medicine. This will crush your club every time.
To get you started, here are a few books that led to great
club nights:
Forever Changes: Brendan Halpin (Rated by many as the best
book we’d ever read in the club.)
A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens (A classic, and most
people know the story, which makes it a super-breezy read.)
Survivor: Chuck Palahniuk
(This one is a little longer than it should be for the club, but there’s
lots to talk about and it goes by fast.)
Water for Elephants: Sara Gruen (Also probably too long, but again,
well-loved.)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams
(Everyone read it. The only problem was,
the plot is so thin there isn’t a lot to discuss…)
The Road: Cormac McCarthy (Painfully depressing, but great
discussion.)
Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury (Ebooks make this one even more
interesting.)
The Cat in the Hat: Dr. Seuss (I cannot emphasize how great
the discussion was.)
As for complete failures:
1491 – Only two people finished it.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Again, two people.
Lolita: A little controversy sounds like fun, but man, this
was a tedious book.
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