You may recall that we recently asked Culture Vultures’ readers to choose a book for our book club. For good measure, CV also suggested introducing a controversial guest female reviewer into our all-male bookclub as part of the process. All in all, we found the entire process a really positive experience and a real eye opener into how we could bring some new people and ideas into what we do.
On one hand, we could quite happily carry on as we are and have been doing for the last 6 years – reading books, drinking red wine, causing a ruckus in The Cross keys…but we do like to change and develop and we feel that the time is right to invite some new members to join us.
We could simply ask people we know, but as we generally came together not really knowing each other, we feel that we should continue in this vein and find new members that none of us know. Then we had a brainwave: why not ask the readership of the Culture Vulture if anyone out there would like to join the Boys Book Club. And we’re looking for two people to join – do you fancy it?
This of course raises a whole host of questions and issues. Firstly how do you go about choosing people to join without it turning into the new lodger interview scene from Shallow Grave? I like the famous Groucho Marx quote “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member” and I suspect that if any of our current members applied or been interviewed to join this book club, we probably wouldn’t have got in.
And then the questions began…
- What if more than two people want to join ?
- Do we simply go random and put names in a hat?
- Shall we ask people to give a short reason on why they would like to join?
- Should we ask people to pick their favourite books?
- How about first come first served?
- Are we still going to be a Boys Only Book Club?
The more you think about it, the more complicated it gets! On top of this, we’re very concerned about coming across as some worthy literary types deciding who is deemed suitable to join us – that’s definitely not what we are about. We came together randomly, have a great time and would like two people to join in and share that with us. Every one of us has brought interesting experiences to our discussions and we have no doubt that the new people would do the same.
I think it’s worth noting that there is a certain amount of process and rigour to what we do (see original post for full details) so any new person coming along would need to a) read the book (and there will be a wide variety of books read) and b) be prepared to give their view of that book (not some Googled researched view but their view). We meet roughly every 4 weeks (usually the 1stFriday of the month) and we normally meet in a pub in Leeds.
If you fancy it then we think that the best thing is to send in a very short expression of interest to Ian at the following address: [email protected] and we’ll then pick two candidates. It could be that we end up picking more than two people and they could come along and meet us to see if you fancy being part of it – to be honest, we’re still not sure the best way to do this just that we want to do it. One other thing we did think is that if there are a few people interested then perhaps we could put other people in touch and hey presto a new random book club is formed. By the way, if you have any bright ideas to help with our ‘difficult’ process then please leave them in the comments section below.
Over to you…
oh, and just to mention that the picture to accompany this post is the 80 books that we’ve read so far in the book club (in order I think) which might help to give you a flavour of what we have been reading.
Your book club sounds great fun. I have been part of one for nearly three years now, and love our monthly get-together.
When my friend and I formed it, we luckily received just the right amount of responses; we deemed 12 to be a suitable number – enough to get a good cross section of people, but not enough to become too much of a rowdy debate.
No-one in our club knew anyone else. We saw this as an opportunity to review books, but also a chance to have a social. The way we saw it, was if the club didn’t suit any individuals for whatever reason, they always had the choice to leave!
As it is, we all get on famously. There are 11 women and one guy. Not for any reason, other than that’s who applied. Over the three years, no-one has moved on, and although we are all very different characters, we get on brilliantly.
I’m not sure how you go about choosing books, but we take it in turns. With there being 12 members, we all get one choice throughout the year. We don’t go to the pub, but whoever’s choice it is that particular month, hosts the book club. They put on a light supper, and we all bring a bottle of wine.
One of our concerns was that some of the more ‘confident’ among us would dominate the conversation throughout the evening. We therefore have decided to take it in turns to review. The person speaking holds an object, and whilst they have that object the floor belongs to them. Once they finish, the object is passed to the next person, who then begins their review. Once everyone has had their turn, it’s open for discussion/debate.
As I’m sure you can tell, I love our book club. I love the fact that it allows me to discover books that I wouldn’t otherwise have chosen, and also that it allows me to meet and mix with people I probably wouldn’t have come across in normal day to day life.
I hope you manage to find your two recruits. I would urge people who are considering joining a book club to take the leap. What have you got to lose?
Julia
I love being in a book club for all the reasons you do Julia. When I look at all of the books we’ve read over the year, a very high percentage are books I wouldn’t have ordinarily read, which is testament to how valuable it is.
Your format is remarkably similar to ours and I guess that with 12 members a fair degree of discipline is needed to keep things on track?
I also like the sound of it being somebody’s turn to select a book each month. That would eliminate our sometimes rushed discussion at the end of the evening around what we’re going to read next time round. I’ll drop that in to the mix next time.
Phil