First, thanks ALOT Alyce for making up the book club brochure. It looks so professional. You're awesome. I was reading through it and lauged as I remembered the meeting we came up with the rules and I have to ask; is anyone else wondering if it's time to break into smaller groups? Poor Marianne is trying to round up books for 19 people to read. WOW!
Ann and I were talking about the pros of smaller discussion groups. Everyone can comment was a big pro for me. We do better sticking to the topic or in other words there aren't as many side conversations happening. It seemed easier to talk about and make decisions on the next book we read too. My personal favorite was when we designated each month a genre and then were given a few choices to decide on together within that genre. I felt most out of my comfort zone but grew a lot more by the end of the year, I started to feel more well read so to speak.
Ann brought up a great point regarding the name of our book club. For a while we were calling it "Reading Girl" due to the name of the book journal we passed around; so not that we have to call it that still, but Nampa24 makes it sound related to church. So does anyone else have opinions on it?
I know, I know, I'm opinionated. But you still love me for it right??? I hope??? Please get evryone to respond; I think in loo of it being a new year it's a good time to revisit "The RULES"
11 comments:
We can call it Reading Girl - I apologize for the Nampa24 thing - that's my fault when I threw together the blog. Sorry! I'll change it ... if I can figure it out.
I'm up for whatever. Just don't kick me out.
Angie, You are AWESOME!
I like Reading Girls too.
I wasn't apart of book club when the rules were first put in place, so I don't remember the reasons why they were made. As far as breaking up the group, how would that be done without hurting feelings? I'm sure nobody would want to be 'kicked out', I for one don't want to be. I agree about the side discussions, and genre theme, but I guess I'm not sure how to go about doing it. Would the host have to be more prepared to keep the discussions focused on the book? I'm not sure.
I love book club and look forward to it every month. I've read books that I normally would not have.
P.S I still love you Amy.
Maybe we need to adopt a talking stick and pass it around the circle. :-)
I also liked having assigned genres...took more thought but I think that's sort of the point.
The group has gotten huge, but how would we split without being cliquish? Alphabetically? Those who prefer assigned Genre vs. Free choice? By birthday? The problem used to be that with only 10 or so members, sometimes only 4 or 5 would show for a meeting and that was a bummer for the hostess. Would attendance drop off if we split?
(this is Erin, by the way.)
Lets see...
Personally, I don't mind the growing number of people; I like to see what everyone thinks (as long as everyone has a place to sit!) Here are a few factors I thought of:
1) I do enjoy discussing the book--I don't really think it would be too hard to talk about it at least a little bit, no matter the number of people. Our discussion about Emma was great, and there were a lot of people there. However, I suppose there might be some people that are not as comfortable talking in a large group?
Perhaps we can make up a list of a few general questions (that we could use for all the books)that we can start our discussion around.
2) I think perhaps a larger issue might be getting the number of books that we need each month. I know that I as I was choosing a book, I had several that I had to rule out simply because there weren't enough copies available.
3)How is the day working out for everyone? I can see spliting if there are people who would rather meet at a diffferent time.
4)Attendance does usually drop off during the summer.
5) I also like reading the different genres; did we switch because everyone simply prefered fiction anyways? Maybe we could compromise, like saying try not to pick a similar genre as the month previous to you, unless you had a book you were just dying to share...?
Or we could have a running list (on this site?) of ideas for books in several genres.
Hmm. Well, that's all I have time for now...
p.s. Congrats to April and fam!
(erin again...I'm not good at this computer stuff)
I think we dropped the assigned genre thing because no one wanted to be stuck with a topic she wasn't comfortable with. I don't think the intention was to lapse into all fiction all the time. Of course, fiction can be divided into many categories and we've had some variety. Assignments just sort of round everything out.
It is getting hard to get copies of books. If we keep the large group we're going to have to stick with very popular/common books in order to have enough copies available to share around. That's sort of a drag, since obviously there are a lot of good, lesser known titles out there.
Rules are meant to be broken, right? :-)
I am one of those people that doesn't like to speak out in the middle of a large group (I get shy I guess) but I also don't want to split up. It doesn't bother me in the least if I don't get to say my opinion.
There is the old-fashioned "raise your hand if you have something to say" idea...
Love the new name...makes it a little less church-function-ish.
okay chicas--- here we go.I got all kinds of ideas.
Talking stick? I vote for no. I do say that ya can't comment on the book if you haven't read it.
As for the group size, how many are really going to stick with it over summer, etc... that could tell us alot, and I vote for a 12 person size, one person for each month.
Splitting it is tricky but I think that you could split a new group from the old group with all the newbies that have showed up recently.
We don't have to assign genres but everyone that hosts picks their genre and it can't be repeated for 6 months so we don't get stuck in a rut.
If it stays the way it is it will only get bigger and then eventually there will be no talk of a book,. Whatever happens I think their should be a limit and that limit can't be exceeded unless the entire group agrees.
And maybe Adrienne's idea of splitting based on the night you want could be a factor too.
How's that for opionions?!!
Love ya reading ladies,Ann
Hello, I'm a friend of Angie's from college. I found your blog from Angie's blogger profile. I live in San Antonio, and am involved in a book club down here. Our book club is experiencing some of the same issues as your group. I actually came to your blog to see how you gals organized your group, to get ideas on how to help our group. Last month we discussed “Twilight”, and 22 people show up (I think it was a fluke phenomenon just because the book appealed to so many people that don’t typically read much). The discussion was all over, and difficult to focus/direct. Our area is very transient with a lot of military people moving in an out. It is hard to find a balance in making sure the turnout isn’t too big, too small, and doesn’t make people feel left.
The group I attend, doesn’t have any rules, official leaders, advertising… Info spreads by word of mouth or random e-mails. Book selections are chosen based on who speaks up the loudest about their choice. Everyone is responsible for finding their own copy of the book. It is not affiliated with any organization (although most everyone is LDS). I crave more organization, and better planning and record keeping. (But the group was started two years before I move to Texas; I am not a founder and don’t have stewardship.)
Online I saw directions on “how to set up a book club.” The website said that an organizer would invite 12 people to join the group. If some of those people declined membership, then the organizer would invite someone else in that place. Each person would then be assigned a month to host and a different month to lead the discussion. At the end of each book club meeting, the discussion leader for book in three months would bring 3-5 books to suggest to the group. For example in January, the May discussion leader would bring three books, give a brief description of each book, then the group would vote on which book to read. Everyone would have three months to locate a copy of the book on her own.
I’m still looking for ideas on what to do when a group grows, and you don’t want people to feel left out, and there’s not a logical/fair way to split the group.
Anyways, I hope that you’ll post your solutions online to help other groups like mine. Thank you for posting your reading lists. I’ve referred to it for reading ideas. If you’d like, I can e-mail Angie a list of books our group has read over the past four years.
Thanks! – Angela.
Thanks, Angela!!!
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