You should start a book club

Last year I realized you don't need anyone's permission to start a book club. You can just ... start a book club, so I did. We've named ourselves "All Systems Read" as a nod to Martha Wells series The Murderbot Diaries which starts with All Systems Red. We read Science Fiction and Fantasy books, mostly because that's what I tend to like.

We meet once a month, talk about the book we've read, eat snacks, talk about other books and our lives, and then go home. It's great. The local library even has "book club books" you can borrow lots of copies for if you happen to be in a book club. It's only worked out for us once (reading This is how you lose the time war, which is delicious, you should read it).

I really value this time in my month. I work from home for a small company, I could probably use more social time. I like meeting up with this distinct group of people once a month to talk about a book. I like reading books that I might have never read.

Book club makes me happy.

Tips

• I tried to be deliberate in launching the book club: I didn't want to meet up with the same group of people I already see a lot. So I advertised it in a local tech group and selectively mentioned it to a few people I know but see less. I had a google form to indicate interest, then just started emailing folks. This has worked well!
• Try to establish early what you do and don't want to read. We've decided a book about vikings raping and pillaging towns isn't the right fit for us. I'm glad we got to have that discussion and keep everyone comfortable.
• Places to market a book club you're launching: library, book store, board game cafe, local coffee shop, community groups/mailing lists.

Things we do

• We make a fun sign for the front door so people know they're in the right place
• We try to pick a book no one has read before (our hit rate on this is bad though)
• We've picked the book we're currently reading, and the book we'll read next. This gives folks more time to get through wait lists at libraries and such.
• We have stickers 😄

Cover photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/covers-of-books-on-a-shelf-8391470/