How to Pick a Book for Bookclub
One of the main reasons I have avoided bookclubs in the past is that I live in fear of choosing a book to make other people read.
Which means that, for me, step #1 for selecting a bookclub book is STRESS LIKE MAD. Preferably for weeks.
Currently, I belong to two bookclubs. For one of them, I chose Wait Til Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I’d read it in 2006 for my sports history class at BYU (a much more difficult class than you might guess) and had really enjoyed it.
Frankly, that bookclub was easier to select a book for – it’s a fairly serious book group, with a lot of discussion and there is no hesitancy to pick substantial books. And everyone reads them. Last night, we met and discussed The Warmth of Other Suns, which, clocking in at 640 pages of non-fiction, is not something you breeze through the afternoon of bookclub. All eleven women had read it carefully, and we discussed it for nearly three hours.
So, you know, for that bookclub, it’s easier to pick a book.
The other bookclub, though . . .whew. I have debated for months what book to choose.
First off, we have a big span of what people like. Some members of the group want fluff reading (and, if you know me, you know I am not opposed to fluff reading), while other members are pretty openly critical of anything fluffy we read. So that makes it difficult to pick something that will keep everyone happy.
And if people aren’t interested in the book that’s chosen, they simply don’t read it. When someone chose My Antonia a few months ago, I was the only person who read it. The. Only. One. (Even the person who picked it didn’t reread it).
Also, many of the people in that group have a Kindle, so picking something that doesn’t have a Kindle edition means you’re going to lose a lot of the group right there (which disqualified one of my early possibilities of Cheaper by the Dozen).
I contemplated choosing The Wednesday Wars but I am so deeply attached to that book that I truly didn’t think I could stand it if half the group didn’t read it and the other half thought it was dumb. I just. . . couldn’t.
And I might have picked something like Outliers or What the Dog Saw, but the group read non-fiction titles the last two months, so I wanted to move away from that for the sake of diversity.
So, finally, after way too much deliberation, I picked The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. It’s funny, it’s clever, it’s fiction, it’s an easy read (even more necessary since it’s summer), and I love it, but if people don’t like it, I can deal (do I sound like a delicate emotional flower or what?).
I enjoy both groups for different reasons, but whoa boy, picking a book for this second group took at least 3 months off my life.
Am I the only one with the kind of mental instability over bookclub books? (Also, did this give you zero help in choosing a book for your own bookclub, or what? I am nothing if not unhelpful).
My bookclub has a rule that you can't have read the book you pick when you pick it. That increases my stress levels by at least 300%.
I don't recommend books that I really, really love to other people because I don't want it to damage our relationship if they don't like it.
I was in a book club for a while that was very similar to the second one you're in: if we picked a fluffy book, two people would complain. If we picked something meatier, the fluff fans would complain. And half the time only one or two of us would even have read the book before we met! One time we picked The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and since it was massive and I knew my sister would need to read it, too, I drew up a whole reading schedule and read like crazy for a week – and I was the only one who bothered to read the whole thing. I was so mad. Our discussions somehow always ended up being a debate about Twilight, too.
I also made the mistake of choosing books I really love, like Nine Coaches Waiting and Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman (which is adorable, and if you haven't read it you really should), so my feelings were hurt when no one else liked them much.
No wonder it didn't last long!
I just gave a friend The Wednesday Wars and she started it but didn't like it enough to finish (gasp!) Now I feel like we can't ever talk about or share books again, so sad. Good call.
it totally stresses me out. My book group here is die hard, but not in the way that makes you hate it- I love it! They read Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History, and then invited Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to come and lead the discussion. What we always do is choose three books, then everyone gets to vote. That way it's something most people want, and most people always read it.
We read The Wednesday Wars and Stargirl in our book club and I was HURT when people didn't like them and criticized them. I will never recommend to a book club that they read a book I LOVE because I can't take that kind of discussion again.
Did we read My Antonia for Book Club? I remember reading it a couple of years ago, but not for Book Club. Maybe I was out of town or something, because I loved it. I also looked on your goodreads last month and just read Wednesday Wars and Cheaper by the Dozen. 🙂 The main thing about that kind of book club is you just do what Sheyenne said. Pick what you like and know that not everyone will love it. And who cares. But you're exposing people to books they wouldn't normally read themselves. That's the reason I do book club. So even if I don't like a book, I'm glad to have the exposure to other stuff. I'm excited to read your pick!