How to launch your own book club.

BY HANNAH COFFMAN

Hannah currently works as an editor, college English instructor, and freelance writer, but she is a storyteller first and foremost. From her home in Missouri, Hannah spends her days writing, exploring the Ozarks, kayaking, hiking, and traveling. She's counting down the days until her next adventure. Find more about Hannah at https://hannahclairecoffman.com/.

My art instructor in college frequently said: “Always keep a fiction and a nonfiction book on your bedside table.” Sometimes, my bedside stack of books grows higher than just two, but I’ve continued to live this way, keeping a book within my reach at all times.

Books bring all kinds of wonders into the world, and one of those is the way they open avenues to connection and community. If you’re looking for closer connections, you might consider starting a book club. This may be as easy as asking a few friends to meet up and talk about a book of your choice. It may also be more involved—you could create a group on Meetup or contact your local library to help you facilitate a group.

Here are a few ideas for launching your book club:

• If you’re a university student, check out student organizations to see if there is an established book club at your school.

• If you’re starting from scratch, think about locations, themes, or genres that you want to read. Do you prefer more casual conversation, or do you want to distribute discussion questions to members ahead of time? Do you want to focus on fantasy, YA, or romance?

• Consider launching a virtual book club—this has been helpful for me to stay in touch with friends that are spread out across the country.

• For a virtual book club, create a Facebook group, pick a book, and post weekly thoughts about what you’re reading. You could even schedule a Skype date or Zoom call to chat about the book as a group.

• Try a theme night—if you’re reading a book set in Russia, make some Russian dishes to go along with your discussion.  

• If you feel pressed for time, try downloading the book on audio (Audible is a good starting place) and listen to the book on your commute to work or school.

• One of the best benefits of a book club is that you’ll likely read books that you wouldn’t have ordinarily picked up off the shelf. I suggest using Goodreads to build a list of books you’d like to read. You can look at everyone else’s list and select something with the widest appeal to everyone in the group.

To get you started, I’ve collected three titles (two fiction selections and one nonfiction selection) that can help build your reading list.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This novel is written as a collection of fictional letters, most of them from the pen of Juliet, the main character. Juliet is an author living in post-World War II London, and she is searching for a topic for her next book. On her quest, she meets the people of the small isle of Guernsey, and they captivate her with their stories of hardship and hope.

This novel is enchanting and heartbreaking, and the characters are vivid and lifelike. It is a book for people who love books; the discussions throughout are thoroughly literary and center around a book club formed on the isle of Guernsey. It’s a story about humanity at its best--a story about unlikely friendships. If you are interested at all in historical fiction, you will enjoy this read immensely. In fact, I think you’ll fly through it like I did.

My Grandmother Asked me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Full disclosure: the first time I started reading through this book, I couldn’t get past the first chapter. However, my friend Meg encouraged me to pick it up again, and I’m so glad that I did. The story can be a little hard to follow at first as the main character, Elsa, weaves her way through her grandmother’s whimsical fairy tales.

After her grandmother passes away, Elsa is introduced to a whole host of characters who help her grieve, characters who were also touched by her grandmother’s life. It’s a book that allows us to step into the shoes of a seven year-old, a book about the untold stories of the people we pass every day, and a book about how people—even our heroes— can hold both light and dark inside of them at once.

Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown

Brene studies shame, vulnerability, and courage. She is a social scientist who is able to aptly translate her research into applicable, practical steps for living a more courageous life. If you’re at all interested in learning to develop deeper connections in your relationships and equipping yourself with the skills to live a more authentic life, Brené’s work is an excellent place to start. I think you'll find that her data-driven conclusions are a catalyst for every day bravery.

This is a book I think everyone could benefit from reading. I’m currently reading my way through some of Brené’s other works, but I started with Braving the Wilderness and I’ll continually come back to this book, to Brené’s words on walking through disagreements with grace, and how to belong in our polarized culture.