have you ever ran a book club? (2 Viewers)

Villains · 9 September 2026

i've set out on the endeavor to start a book club within my church. we have quite a lot of readers and writers and i thought it would be perfect for us to be able to gather together and talk about literature, philosophy, poetry and the such.

i plan to make it very casual in the sense that we'll meet once a month and just talk about what we've been reading lately and learn from each other. sometimes we'll do group readings of short stories, poems, excerpts, articles, etc. the reading will be short cause we're all busy people and a lot of us are college students and already have a lot of reading to do. some are parents, some are working adults. so yeahhh....

i'm so excited and passionate about this. i've coordinated a whole spreadsheet, already made a logo, and have flyers/posters ready for our first few meetings. i'm trying to build a relationship with this local cafe so that we can reserve one of their tables for our group and hopefully that goes well!

have any of you ever ran a book club? or any club of any sort? what tips would you have and what's your experience?

Villains · 9 September 2026

the club is called "commonplace club" btw (inspired from commonplace notebooks in which you collect quotes, facts, ideas, and random stuff. basically just a little collection of knowledge)

and the members will be called commonplace cats

Into_the_starz · 9 September 2026

I have but it was kinda a flop :p
We all read the book "The Housemaid" and we all read a chapter a week and we would meet up and talk about it and what we though
that book is amazing btw

centen · 9 September 2026

I've been in three book clubs.

One was an adult fantasy/scifi book club through a local bookstore. I quit going to that one, because I disliked the lack of "accountability" so to speak. Where people would recommend bad books or books with clearly objectionable content and then not even come to the book club to discuss THEIR recommendation. And there's something ballsy about going "30 other people should spend their time and money on this... not me, but you should." Plus, the type of attendees changed over time to being people who seem to really lack any media literacy.

Second one is a small group of friends, as in, everyone there is friends with at least one other person. The way we do it is that, every month, there is a new host. The host puts up three books which the rest of us vote on. That has worked much better, because the host is obligated to actually be present for their book club, and the fact that you're all friends with someone there means there's a little bit of that consideration for other people.

The third one was a short-lived "board games and books club" where we copied what the second book club did as far as picking a book goes, but then added on playing board games semi-related to the theme of the book we just read. That has been fun, but people got busy and it just kind of got lost.

dark_tranquility · 9 September 2026

I tried something like this on Facebook and it failed miserably
I updated it regular no takers though

HugeBakkaeMotae · 9 September 2026

I think that sounds like a great idea, I've never been a part of one but I would very much like to some day. I wish people would read more and I believe that it is good for the soul, these days many young people seem to desire a return to physical media as well so it's a great time to give them that little push.

I don't have any advice to give but I will point out that Lily (from Nmixx) runs an active book club with her fans. It might be worth checking out some time if the subject interests you.