Try to conceal your surprise if you come across people who haven’t ever heard of one. But just for the record, reducing it
to its bare bones, “a book club is ideally a
group of 8-10 people, who presumably, love to read and get together every now and then to discuss a mutually agreed-upon book”, says Dinesh Sharma, who’s been a librarian for 12 years.
Dinesh says, “I’ve seen many book clubs form and dissolve, all in a matter of days.” So how does one develop a book club? “It’s very easy,” he assures. “We first need a core group. It’s a great deal easier to set up a book club with 2 or 3 people who already have a rapport. Remember, as the members increase it becomes that much more difficult to coordinate schedules and meet up regularly”, warns Dinesh.
Neha, a student of English literature, has been a part of a small book club from the last three years. She says, “It’s downright disheartening when avid readers join and leave. But people come and go all the time. If you have a strong core group, your book club is here to stay.” She tells us something about the initial stages of a book club, “In your very first meeting, you must lay down those governing principles that will make sure that your club’s a serious one and not some slapdash, random group of idlers. Here, seek suggestions regarding the kind of books that should be picked (fiction, non-fiction, paperbacks, etc), who would host and where and what time of the month would you meet up, etc.”
Rahul, who is learning animation in Mumbai, speaks about his now defunct book club, “We used to meet at a
different restaurant on the third Tuesday of every month. And a different person hosted each time. The host bought appetizers and desserts and also chose the book for that month. There were no boundaries to the kind of books he could choose from, science-fictions, how-to books, management books, everything was welcome.”
So what do you do between appetizers and desserts? “After you’ve read the book, you’d have marked important pages and noted down questions that you want addressed during the session. To facilitate discussion, you put forth the questions and let others answer first. Because that’s the idea, you don’t want to come across as a teacher, you want different takes on certain issues described in the book to extend your understanding of the work. You find links between comments and sum it up, generally by letting each person make a final comment and probably also rating the book on a scale of one to ten,” Rahul concludes exhaustively.
With so many people getting together, the social time is so charming that many people struggle to restrict their discussions to the book. This is where the host comes in; she must identify tangents and harness the group’s attention back to the book. So, here’s your book club. When can we join in?