Running a book club

I've been a part of several book clubs over the years. There's several way these things work. And combinations too. But we can figure out what works for us.

Genre. Some book clubs do just one type, like mystery, or science fiction, or emotionally overwrought fiction recommended by Oprah. Some are strictly fiction. Or it can be anything. I vote for anything.

Choosing a book. Some take strict turns. Others choose based on what people are reading anyway. Others bring selections and people decide which they want to read next. Usually the person suggesting a book notes where it is available, and if the library has copies. It does no good to suggest a book that is out of print, unless you want to tease your buddies. (So one of my faves, Egil's Saga is right out. Sigh.)

Meeting structure. Some meet in member's homes, and take turns. Some pick a central place such as a coffee shop, and always meet there. Some let the person who chose the book choose where to meet. In a big city meeting place can be difficult. Some are very structured about how they discuss a book, almost like a literary dissection. Others are much more free form about discussion, what they liked or didn't like, how they felt about it, how it relates to them, which characters they liked or didn't, comparison to the movie (if any), and spiraling out from there. There's been several times where our book club has read the book, met here, discussed the book, watched the movie, and discussed both over BBQ and beer. That was good.

Meeting frequency. Usually once a month is good. Sometimes less often over busy times.

My thoughts on a blog book club. You knew I'd have thoughts, didn't you. These are just my thoughts, put out to spark discussion. You have thoughts too, let's find out what they are.

I start from all of us wanting to find good books to read. It's nice to talk about a book with others that have read it, or knowing that someone who's opinion you respect liked it, *before* you shell out big bucks to buy it.

One advantage of the blog format, especially with multiple authors, is that we can have multiple discussions going at once, and people can participate where they choose. If you're just a reader, you can add comments. If you're an author, you can go into the original blog posting, and add material to it.

So for example, I've got one book posted already. All discussion about that book should go in comments or in the blog post itself. This discussion might be open for months, as people get around to reading it. People might comment multiple times almost like a discussion. I'd like to see fairly open discussion, and not get into a formal literary thing. We're all smart people with a variety of life experience, and if that ties into the book, I'm more than happy to read about it.

That doesn't stop someone else from adding a good book, and getting another comment thread going, though for sanity's sake we might want to limit the number of books in active discussion. Unless, that is, we want to go into a mode where we pick one book, read it, and comment, then move one. I see this as being a fairly active place, with lots of comments. I think it's fair that someone is able to comment even if they haven't finished the book. Hmmmm, I suppose we should have a discussion about spoilers, and what people think of that.

One neat thing we could try is to combine the blog with a MSM format. That is, we pick an evening when most of us are available, and comment like mad, so it's almost like a real time discussion. I'm not sure how good blogger is at supporting that sort of thing, but we can try.

What other neat ideas do you have about how this could or should work?

What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell

I've read all of Malcolm's books. They're good, but just a bit disappointing. I always want more detail. This is a series of articles from The New Yorker, on all sorts of different topics. All readable, all interesting. All bringing together some interesting points.

I particularly liked Million Dollar Murray, and how a potential solution to homelessness manages to enrage both left and right. I like it.