Running the Meeting - Moving On
After all the planning details are taken care of and the ground rules are agreed upon, it's time to start the meeting. This is the fun part! (You may have asked other book group members to help you out with all the following so one person doesn't have to do all the work. They will be more than happy to help!) Begin by having the member(s) who volunteered for and/or were assigned:
- give an overview of the title everyone has all hopefully read
- give information about the author
- what other books have they written
- what awards and recognition has the author received
- share a few reviews
- author still living?
Tip: If they are still living, e-mail them to share that you picked his or her book for your book club selection. The author will surely be honored, and you might even strike up a correspondence and conversation about the very book you selected for your book club. If your group is online, some authors will join in with book discussion.
If you rotate the book suggestions, you might have the person who suggested the book for that particular month take care of everything for the next meeting. If you have more than twelve members, you can double up and divide the work. Book groups that choose all the titles they will read during the upcoming year can assign each month to a member.
A good idea is to exempt the hostess/host from other duties that month as they are providing the refreshments and the meeting space!
Another Tip: Relevant articles from the newspaper or magazines add to the discussion. I helped a member locate an article in a London newspaper about "savior siblings" to take to her book group discussion of Jodi Picoult's very popular book, My Sister's Keeper
Start the Discussion First Things First