Book Club Experience

The book club I observed discusses adult fiction books. They meet once a month a have a group of regulars that have become friends through the book club. Pre-covid they would often go out for lunch together before the book club. There were eleven people, all retirement age. The library is able to purchase book club kits that have both regular and large print copies of the book they are reading. One librarian puts these together for the entire system. She picks popular books to use and librarians who host book clubs are able to request that she uses specific books. The kits are available for patrons to check out for their own book clubs outside the library as well. When the library is using a kit for one of their book club discussions, patrons can come to the library to get a book from the kit up to a month before the meeting. Patrons did mention during the meeting that they would like the library to get more eBook copies of the books they discuss.

The kits come with a list of questions to discuss. The questions for this book, The Woman’s Hour by Elaine Weiss, came from a list in the back of the book. The librarian hosting this book club told me she generally uses the questions to guide the discussion, but she reads each book as well so she can ask her own questions if she wants.

Since the beginning of the pandemic the book club has been held over Zoom, but it used to be in person and it lasts one hour. The host typically opens the Zoom room fifteen minutes before the meeting begins, but on the day I observed she was needed elsewhere in the library and didn’t open until the meeting started. She spent time at the beginning going over how to work Zoom functions, such as mute and chat. She explained that they rarely use the chat box, but if someone had a link, book title, or something else people might want to reference later, they could put it in there. She kept everyone off of mute so anyone could speak whenever they wanted. Participants could use the “raise hand” button if they were having a difficult time inserting themselves into the conversation, but no one needed it that day.

The host began by asking if anyone had any opening comments or general thoughts about the book. Some participants gave a few comments about what they liked and didn’t like. The host gave a background of the author and then led into questions from her guide. She asked open-ended questions like “What did you think about…” and “It’s in interesting that…” She sprinkled in her own thoughts every once in a while.

For the most part the host did not need to say much. The participants easily had a lot to say. The book was very political, yet they were able to keep the discussion polite. Although some participants talked more than others, no one monopolized the discussion and everyone was able to speak.

They had a lot to say and could have kept talking, but ten minutes before the end, the host began to wrap up the discussion. She had each participant give their rating of the book on a scale from zero to five and a last comment about how they felt about the book. The ratings were tallied to figure out the group’s overall rating for the book.

The host sends out information about other possible discussion books after the meeting and the participants look them over and vote for the next book they want to read. She told me this works well because they can’t complain to her about the book choice if they don’t end up liking it.