Book Club Tips for Success

Starting a book club with a good friend, and going to our monthly meetings, has been the best thing to happen to me in the last year. Our Sunday afternoons are two splendid hours of catching up, lunching on tasty treats, drinking lots of mimosas and wine, and chatting about the most recent book.

Here are some things that make our group work so well (with several tips coming from my dear friend Diane who has been in a tight book club for decades).

Hone the membership: When we were starting out, the other co-founder and I both came up with a half-dozen names of women we thought would be fun to hang out with and talk to each month. We were open to those gals brining a friend or two so they'd feel comfortable in the large group, too. Despite our best intentions, this led to a lot of short-lived members who just couldn't commit to our once a month meetings.

Now that we've been going for over a year, we've got a really solid group of committed members, and I imagine it takes that long to shake out the committed from those who can't commit. Don't be afraid to drop people who have only been once in 10 months. Be open to adding new members. Some of our best members were not at the initial meetings but have been loyal members since joining.

An ideal number seems to hover around 8-10, although we've had great meetings with just 5 in attendance.

Keep meeting rules to a loose scheule: We have a two hour meeting that starts with catching up and lunching. After an hour or so of that we transition into conversation about the book. The last couple minutes of the meeting always have a member volunteering to host the next meeting and telling us what book she's picked (or opening it up for suggestions if she doesn't have a specific title in mind).

We keep it laid back when it comes to finishing the book, too. We don't have strict rules about attending if one hasn't finished it; everyone is welcome to attend no matter how many pages were read.

Embrace girl time: Many of the members are women we hang out with in social settings that include husbands and boyfriends; our book club is a great chance to hang out with just the girls and fly solo for a couple hours. For those of us with young kids and stressful jobs, this is wonderfully freeing. I often come home from book club feeling like I've hit the reset button thanks to some time away from my other responsibilities. Several mimosas helps the cause, too.

Select books that work for your group: This is a tough one. It has taken some time figuring out what works best for our group, and it's hard for people who don't read a lot to pick out titles of books that will be crowd pleasers.

We like books that:

•  are known for being a page turner or a fast read
• we've heard good things about but haven't gotten around to trying 
• have many copies available at the library so we don't have to buy a new book each month
• are under 400 pages

We also try to notice patterns in books that we enjoyed in looking for our next book. For instance, after reading Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, we picked his Devil in the White City for our next book. During our spirited conversation over real life moments that were stranger than fiction, we connected it to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. After realizing that many members hadn't read it, and the others hadn't read it in over a decade, we picked it as our next book. In short, this is what good readers do. They notice patterns, go on author kicks, and pick books that are similar to past hits.

Have fun with the theme: Our group likes to pair our meeting with lunch, and each member brings a bottle of wine, appetizer, side, or dessert to go with whatever the host provides. From the start we've had fun brining items that tie to the book we're discussing. Our host for The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate served pecan pie and fried chicken to go with the southern setting. When we read In the Garden of Beasts, set in Germany, I brought spatzen and German potato salad. When I hosted for Julia Child's My Life in France, I made her quiche recipe and had nice French cheeses. We even joked for The Girl on the Train that we were going to show up with empty bottles of booze.

Are you in a great book club? What are the secrets to your success?