The trick that saved my book club from falling apart

Our book club had like 8 people arguing every month about what to read. Last spring in Portland I tried something random where everyone writes down 3 book ideas on slips of paper and we draw one from a hat. It stopped all the fighting cold and we actually finished The Left Hand of Darkness together for the first time. Has anyone else got a weird method that keeps your group from bickering?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_owens2d ago

Have you tried rotating who picks the book entirely? I was in a group that was always fighting about genre and we finally did a "choose your own adventure" month where each person got to pick the book for one month and everyone else had to go along with it. It worked great because people felt heard and it spread out the power (plus you knew your turn was coming, so you could be patient with someone else's weird pick). We also agreed no one could complain about the book until after we finished it, which cut down on the pre-reading arguments a lot. The drawing from a hat thing sounds awesome too, I might have to steal that for my next group because we're always stuck on the "too many choices" problem.

cameron4262d ago

Three groups I've been in tried the rotating pick thing and it fell apart every time. The problem was always the same-some people just didn't care enough to pick a book they actually wanted to read, so they'd throw out a random title they'd heard of and nobody was excited about it. Then you'd get stuck with a dud for an entire month and couldn't even complain until after you slogged through it. @harper_owens, I get the appeal of having everyone feel heard, but in my experience forcing each person to have a turn just meant some picks felt phoned in and the group lost momentum. Maybe it works if everyone is super passionate about choosing, but for my groups the whole "no complaining until it's done" rule just bred quiet resentment instead.