{"id":15241,"date":"2014-05-19T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=15241"},"modified":"2018-07-03T11:23:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T16:23:50","slug":"15241","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=15241","title":{"rendered":"First Rule of Book Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Stephanie Leigh Taylor, former Head Editor, <a title=\"INALJ British Columbia\" href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?page_id=5933\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">INALJ British Columbia<br \/>\n<\/a>previously published 5\/5\/13<\/em><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">First Rule of Book Club<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Imagine if book clubs were <strong>run like Fight Club<\/strong> &#8211; if it\u2019s your first night at book club, you have to talk.\u00a0 There is little else worse than going through the work of setting up a book club, advertising it, booking a program space and shepherding a group through reading your selection only to have\u2026.nobody speak up.\u00a0 Silence.\u00a0 Crickets.\u00a0 Muffled coughs, and the sound of the tumbleweeds bouncing through your book club meeting.\u00a0 People staring wildly at you, mutely pleading with you to ask a question, make an observation, SOMETHING.\u00a0 Or alternatively, a conversational train derails and suddenly the topic is grandchildren or vacation spots or politics.\u00a0 How can we as library professionals offer our patrons an interesting book club, and more importantly, keep our readers coming back?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>What to read?\u00a0<\/strong> Selections should be one level of complexity or challenge above what the group is used to.\u00a0 It depends on what type of book club you have &#8211; is it come one, come all, or is your group a specific demographic?\u00a0 Depending on what type of club you\u2019re going for, your selections should obviously reflect your group\u2019s interests; classic novels, Pulitzer winners, science fiction, legal thrillers, etc., as well as reading level and ages.\u00a0 While you should be making selections, it engenders group interest to let the readers pick the club books.<\/li>\n<li><strong>While the traditional book club attracts adults of any gender<\/strong>, others may want to run a book club for kids, teens, boys, mothers, fathers, genre lovers, the unemployed, newcomers, movie lovers or the retired.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be afraid to mix it up a little &#8211; too long have book clubs been the province of middle aged wine drinkers!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conversation.<\/strong>\u00a0 Always, always, always read the book club selection; if you didn\u2019t read it, how do you expect to lead a discussion on it?\u00a0 Make notes, even if it\u2019s only things like \u201cBlargh I hate this character.\u201d\u00a0 Come to book club ready to make observations and connect with others over the book.\u00a0 Tempers may flare, funny bones may be tickled, and that\u2019s fine, <i>as long as the group is still talking about the book<\/i>.\u00a0 Discussions should go on as long as they have to for everyone to say something about what you\u2019ve read.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What to do if\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>One group member starts dominating the conversation?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now would be a good time to cut them off at the knees, so to speak, and let them know that while you value their contributions, others wish to speak as well.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No one is speaking up?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here\u2019s where your notes come in &#8211; use them for speaking points, observations, then go around the room for opinions or differing viewpoints, get the discussion going!\u00a0 Depending on the book, there may already be a Book Club guide on the Internet, Google around and see what you find before the meeting.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>An actual fight breaks out?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Call Security?\u00a0 Separate the combatants and move on to another group member for their comments.\u00a0 Send one to Time Out if you have to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Remember to solicit feedback from your group members, and READ ON!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Stephanie Leigh Taylor, former Head Editor, INALJ British Columbia previously published 5\/5\/13 First Rule of Book Club Imagine if book clubs were run like Fight Club &#8211; if it\u2019s your first night at book club, you have to talk.\u00a0 There is little else worse than going through the work of setting up a book&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=15241\">Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3993,3994,3992,3995],"class_list":["post-15241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-book-club","tag-fight-club","tag-inalj-british-columbia","tag-stephanie-leigh-taylor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Flag_of_British_Columbia.svg_.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1WoMK-15241","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}