How to Host a Book Club

Creating a Book Club

To start with the basics, to host a book club you’ll first want to get together a group of people who would like to join with you! Of course this will vary with however you want your personal book club to look like. You might be looking for big numbers to grow a community, you might be looking to start an online club where you host a digital community, or (what I recommend) you could be looking to start a book club to have a fun reason to see your friends more regularly!

This guide is going to be focused as though you’re choosing the latter, as that’s what I’ve enjoyed and highly recommend! But of course feel free to tailor the advice below to your own personal needs as well.

The Book Club Members

Wondering who would be a good fit for your book club? The following could help you brainstorm:

• Who in your life already loves reading? A big downfall for book clubs can be having people who don’t actually read join, as they often might read at different paces than work for the rest of the group or skip reading altogether which can feel disappointing and de-motivate the rest of the group from sticking to the committed dates as well.
• Who is comfortable listening to other people’s thoughts? Another important quality for a good book clubber is that they don’t dominate the discussion with their own thoughts and opinions, and are respectful towards other people sharing their thoughts without shutting them down before they’ve gotten a chance to speak. Book clubs can often prompt deeper discussions, and it’s important to host an environment that’s respectful towards all of your members – we want this club to grow friendships not end them 😀
• Whose schedule aligns with yours? A logistic consideration could be who has similar availability towards your own, so that it is easy to schedule meetings at a time that works for all of you without much hassle. Do they live in close proximity to you? Is their free time at similar hours of the day?

Ideal Number of Members

It is also worthwhile to consider how many people would be ideal for your book club before you start tossing the idea out to anyone you run into. In my experience, the most successful book club hovers between three to five people in size, erring on the smaller size first.

Is this to make the book club exclusive? Of course not! It’s actually one of the hardest thing about having a successful book club, but the reality is it is extremely difficult to balance the schedules of two people, let alone three, or four, or five, or so on… Getting higher than that really just makes it difficult logistically to actually meet, which is the whole point of book club!

Another reason to keep it small is to promote discussion. When I reflect on group discussions I’ve been a part of, it seems to be natural that most people don’t want to speak up in front of a large audience, as it can be nerve-wracking! Add on top of that the fact that book clubs often lead to vulnerable discussions, with a big group you might the majority of participants just choose not to talk when it comes down to it. With a smaller group, sharing one’s thoughts can seem less intimidating, and the number of people you are being vulnerable with at once can seem more manageable.

When you keep the group small, it also provides you with the opportunity to grow deeper connections with those people over time, as opposed to just sharing a bit of small talk before bouncing to the next person in a larger group.

For all the reasons above, one of our strongest recommendations to having a successful book club with friends is to keep it to five or less members (if possible).

Choosing a Book to Read

Selecting the book for your book club to read can be a little tricky, as of course you’ll never really know if you will like it until after you’ve read it! Generally speaking here are some tips to help guide the decision making:

• Consider books that everyone in your group would be okay reading. Does this mean nobody should break out of their normal genre? Of course not! But if somebody would lose sleep for weeks after reading a book about a serial killer, don’t put your friend through that! Read that one on your own time and consider a different book for book club.
• Trust the classic over the trendy. If you’re looking for book recommendations, I would recommend walking into a book store and checking out their “classic” section for a book to pull from! These books have often stood the test of time, almost always are discussion worthy, and have been popular reads for sustained periods of time – so you’re stacking the odds in your favor for picking a great book! You might get lucky with a book that’s gone viral on the internet, but you also might just be falling victim to a good advertisement that caught everyone’s attention but falls short when it comes to the content.
• Steer away from series. I LOVE a good series. But for book club it can seem like a pretty daunting commitment to line yourselves up for several books at a time when reading a series as a group, as opposed to a stand alone book from which you can pivot to something new once you’ve finished & discussed together. A lot of times series books also end on cliff hangers or spend a lot of content setting up the next book, so they don’t always lead to many discussion topics. But I’m never not going to tell you to read Harry Potter or the Hunger Games.
• Avoid choosing the book for personal motives. I think it’s really easy to come across certain topics and tell yourself that you would love to learn more about that one day, but then forget about it and never look into it again (because we’re all busy and that’s just life!). But if you are curious about going back to school for a degree in psychology, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else in your book club would benefit or show interest in a book about psychology. So before suggesting a book I recommend asking yourself a simple sanity check of: is this something I think everyone would enjoy or benefit from, or am I just using the club to hold myself accountable for a book I’ve been putting off myself? If it’s the latter, maybe save that one for your own exploration outside of book club!
• Ask for recommendations! Your friends outside of book club might have a good sense of the things you’re interested in and what you would like, so you can always ask the people in your life if they’ve read any good books lately! Don’t have a bunch of readers in your life? Walk into your local book store and ask someone there! Or you can check out the “our staff recommendations” shelf as well!

Looking for some recommendations? I highly recommend the following books as great book club reads!

• The Measure by Nikki Erlick
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Kenneth O. Stanley

Setting a Schedule

If you and your friends are people who love a reliable schedule, then hosting a book club together would make an amazing STOMP styled club. In this sense you would pick a day every month (ex: second Tuesday of each month) to reserve time for each other to have book club, which is an easy means to plan ahead and build the club into everyone’s routine.

However I do not have quite that predictable of a schedule, nor do my book club friends! We just happen to be in a phase of life with a lot going on so it can be difficult to have a predictable time to get together.

Regardless, it still is helpful to plan out the book club meet date in advance (by at least 3-4 weeks). This is usually far enough out that people have at least one day open a week that you can set plans together for, and also allows people enough time to read when they need to based on other events they have going on that month! After all, book club isn’t meant to be stressful 🙂

Choosing In Person vs. Virtual

Now this one is a big one for me. I think hosting a book club where everyone can get together in person is heaps & bounds better than joining virtually. There are a few reasons for this:

1) It’s more fun! Getting to see your friends in person is quite simply a better time than seeing them through a screen. Especially in a screen-ridden era. 😉

2) It’s more natural! It’s much easier to connect and talk in person than when you’re on a screen, likely with other distractions popping up in front of you, and having to navigate that awkward delay/cut-off when switching between speakers on a video call. It also just makes the club feel less like a chore and more like a club.

3) It feeds into other activities! Hosting in person is also a fun way to get out of your typical environment and try new things! It could be a new restaurant you make reservations at, it could be a new recipe you try out and bring to share with your club, it could be a new shop you all decide to walk through when book club as finished up but the hangout continues!

For the above reasons and more, I would strongly prioritize getting together in person to get the most fun & engagement out of a book club.

However, I also totally get that that’s not always feasible! A virtual book club is better than no book club, but to be honest I don’t have a ton of advice on how to make that successful because I will (have) bend over backwards to meet in person 😀

Hosting a Book Club

Now comes the fun part! Well if you’re into hosting that is.

For hosting a book club you’ve got a lot of options! You might want to host them in public, you might want to go to someone’s house, but assuming your club lasts for more than one session you’ll more than likely want to mix it up!

For good public spaces to host book club, you’ll want to find somewhere with a decent space for everyone to sit for a while & set their book down, as well as chat openly without disrupting your surroundings. Some recommendations I’ve enjoyed would be a cafe, any outdoor patio setting at a restaurant, a park, or a book store if they have a lounge area!

For hosting in your own home, I would make sure there is comfortable seating so everyone can kick back and chat away for as long as they’d like, some snacks and drinks to enjoy, and maybe some light background music to set the vibes (can even match the vibes to your book!).

The most important part of hosting is that everyone is together and having a good time, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself!

Promoting Discussion

This can be one of the trickiest part of leading a successful book club, as you want people to feel comfortable discussing but don’t want anyone to be spoken over at the same time! Some tried and true tips from my book club are below:

• Tab your book as your read. I love my pack of colorful tabs. I can choose different colors for different books, or to know when I read certain sections, how I felt during sections, all the things! But more importantly tabbing as you read a book allows you to go back to that thought after you’ve finished the story and remember what you were thinking at that time. Without tabs, it’s often easy to just jump to the conclusion of the book and skip over how you felt during the lead up – which is like 90% of the book!
• Share in chronological order. Using the tab method above, a reliable method of ensuring everyone can share their thoughts is going through everyone’s tabs by order of the page they were tabbed on. This allows every thought to be shared without forcing people to talk if they didn’t have a tab or thought to share. It also prevents one person from dominating the discussion, as the topic is lead by the person who is explaining why they tabbed a certain thing before opening it back up to the group for a response.
• Brainstorm an emoji or word for the book. At the end of each book, you can have everyone think of an emoji or a word that they would use to represent the book for them, then have them explain why they chose that!
• Foster a safe space. I know the phrase “safe space” can get tossed around a lot, but its impact is real! You want to make sure everyone in the club feels respected and heard with their thoughts, even during conflict! This is often done through leading by example: asking people what they meant by a certain thing, acknowledging someone’s thoughts before moving onto your own, encouraging differing opinions and praising the opportunity to explore multiple perspectives, etc. Creating this environment is probably one of the most important steps in hosting a successful book club.

Have Fun

Needless to say, all of the above is just my opinion 🙂 They’re things I’ve enjoyed and had success doing with my book club in the past, but there is no “right way” to do it! If you’re putting in this much thought as to research how to host a good book club, I bet the club will succeed just from your thoughtfulness alone!

Regardless of what your book club looks like, it’s important to remember the point is to have fun and enjoy it! Nobody is obligated, it’s not homework, it’s something everyone is choosing to do in their free time so as long as you’re enjoying the experience and hopefully reading a few books along the way as well, you can call it a success.

Happy reading!

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About the Author: Jill is the primary author of Host a STOMP, and has been successfully hosting every Thursday of the month for over a year now! Learn More.