Do: Actually read the book. A pretty basic one. A book club can’t sustain itself for long when only one or two members have actually read the book while every else is just pretending. One of the dirty secrets of every book club is that only half of the participants actually finish the book. Try to be that person at least, say, 40% of the time.Don’t: Act pretentious. A big reason why people are taken aback by the idea of a book club to begin with is the residual annoyance of the guy or girl in your English class that answered every question and tried to lamely shoehorn James Joyce or Neitzsche into every discussion (even though everyone knew they had barely read them). Part of the fun of book clubs are the digressions (philosophical or otherwise) that take place, but nobody likes a one-sided, pretentious rant about some tangential topic. As a recoving member of this group, I speak from more experience than I'd like to admit.
Do: Drink early and often: Everyone is a little too polite during the first half hour of a book club. Those who didn’t like it don’t want to offend the ones that did, those who did don’t want to get too over the top in their praise. The solution: liquor. Lots of it. It loosens everyone up, helps people to be a lot more animated, and also allows them to be way more honest than they would be otherwise. Plus, it really wouldn’t be a very good book club if no egos were bruised along the way.
Don’t: Meet at a bar. Another lesson learned the hard way. The book club I was in during college would meet in the evenings at the bar, and (at least for me) it was a total disaster. For one thing, we met at our favorite bar (the Peanut Barrel), which meant that we recognized practically everyone that came in and had to either a.) ignore them or b.) stop what we were doing to chat. Inevitably, half the group would be some combination of drunk, playing pool, or trying to meet women by the time an hour or two had passed, while the rest of the group would be trying to lamely forge their way through some half-hearted discussion of the book.
Don’t: Pick a long book. This is a book club killer. Everyone’s busy and barely has time to read the books they buy for themselves, let alone the book club choice. Anything over 300 pages will, most of the time, annihilate the discussion. Not only will most people not read anything that long (or won’t have the time to finish), but anything too long is just too grand in scope to be adequately covered in a book club anyway.
Do: Meet in the Afternoon or Right After Work. This rule might apply just for me, but I can’t really think straight until about 1 PM. Any book club meeting before that and I’m pretty worthless. Similarly, the later it gets at night the more people start getting tired or their minds start to wander towards what they have to do the next day. Right after work or at 1-2 PM on the weekends is really the best way to go.
Don’t: Make fun of the book that the chooser picks (too much). Believe me, this one can come back to haunt you if you ever end up personally picking a book for your book club. Books are way more personal than TV shows or albums, and people don’t generally take too kindly to getting teased for their choice. Most people are polite enough to just trash the book itself if they don't like it; but, inevitably, someone always gets careless and crosses the line by insulting the person that choose the book. If they’re anything like me, they’ll want revenge, and they’ll be looking to get it when your own book choice comes around.
Do: Keep going even if you don’t like the book choice. Gut it out. Try to read the book, and, if you don’t like it, at least try to think of an interesting reason for not liking it. A little hate can go a long way, which is why everyone who knows Dale Peck’s book Hatchet Jobs thinks it’s just about the funniest collection of essays ever assembled. This rule might actually be the most important one, as so many book clubs get fractured by people picking and choosing which times to go. Inevitably, it leads to too many catch-all, populist book choices that attempt to appeal to everyone but actually appeal to no one. Anyway, at the very least, come for the booze.
3 comments:
One more: do give your club an excellent and descriptive name, like for instance, THE FINER THINGS CLUB.
I think our first bookclub soiree was a grand success, and I think that, even without the benefit of having this list prior, we avoided most the the don'ts and totally hit on most of the do's! In fact, I'd wonder if you were simply cribbing notes from last month's awesome bookclub meeting if i hadn't picked a book that was way too long to comply with suggestion #5.
Granted, while it was a great first book club meeting, it's probably wise to stay cognizant of the many traps that a book club can fall into. I've seen the exact same things happen in the many knitting circles I've frequented over the years.
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