This kinda misses the point of most book clubs. The point is to have an excuse to meet and talk to people - the book is secondary. In fact many people come to book clubs without having read that month's book, just for the social outlet. Perhaps that's silly from a literary perspective but it still serves a purpose.
I've always treated book clubs more like a shared class and get extremely frustrated when someone shows up without reading the book/chapters ("they're just wasting everyone's time") or when conversation temporarily drifts to non-book-related topics. I go to book clubs for the insights and commentary I get on books from people with different life experiences, reading history, etc. There's plenty of other places you can go if you just want to be social.
I've definitely seen more "social" book clubs, too. I just assumed they were "bad" or not serious, but I guess they're just targeted at people wanting something different out of the book club experience.
There is not? People don't socialize without excuse and did not for years. People who want to socialize have to pick a hobby or interest and try there. It may be sport, bookclub, game, something technical, whatever, but it must be something.
If you have hard time getting along with random people and you need time to open up and get confident with others that is really bad idea. I think book club where mostly the same people who are also less outgoing is better option.
> Monthly social book club, not too serious, new faces always welcome.
> Monthly book club exploring everything from X to Y with a focus on Z. Newcomers wanting a place to discuss how P Qs R with like-minded friends always welcome.
0.) Daytime activity so you get sleep and don't have to drink.
1.) Regular membership - meeting same people over and over again so that friendship can happen after months.
2.) Regular time and place so it is easy to add to schedule, agree with partner on who has kids and so on.
3.) Good fallback for when you dont fit in initially. Common topic.
4.) Safety. It is safer then party with strangers.
5.) Excuse. People need excuse to socialize. Socializing is seen as waste of time or as being bad parent. The club gives excuse for why you are not lazy for doing it.
What is wrong with people wanting to go to that type of party?
Using hobbies is a great way to make friends if you enjoy that hobby. I just think it's a little disingenuous to go to a book club for something other than the book; it feels like going to the gym to just try to chat people up, or really any hobby-related gathering where you don't really care about the hobby. If you're not going to read the book for a book club, it just seems like you might have better luck finding shared hobbies with people at a different kind of club.
Then again, that's just my opinion of what my ideal book club looks like, but that's in no way the "right" way. Social book clubs are probably a great way to get more people to read things they otherwise wouldn't; I just don't get as much out of those kinds of book clubs.
Uh, what? I (and I imagine a good 50%+ of the hacker news readership, perhaps 75%+ if you exclude the USA) am never going to go to either of those without already knowing people.
> generic meetups, smallgroups, dog parks,
Places where you have nothing in common, so nothing to easily bond over (such as a book you've all read)
> volunteering, taking a class
Things where you should be focusing on something else, not socialising (such as in your ideal bookclub).
> If you're not going to read the book for a book club, it just seems like you might have better luck finding shared hobbies with people at a different kind of club.
What makes a book club different to any other hobby club? Or are you saying that you should only go to any hobby meetup if you're a "hardcore" hobbyist?
Because that leaves basically no way to meet people with common interests.
In my mind a book club was a group of middle aged women drinking wine and talking about Fifty Shades of Gray. And even that I thought was just a cliche and not an actual thing.
Are book clubs actually a thing that people regularly take part in?
I've been part of several book clubs. It's definitely a thing people still do. But, it's not the social event of the year or anything like that.
(BTW. it's an old issue; there was even an old episode of Friends making fun of the conflict between joining a book club to learn vs. joining just to socialize.)
My experience from running a Hackerspace is that you need both. Time to talk about everything and nothing, and then time of focus for the people to actually practice their shared hobby. Otherwise everyone may just as well go to a bar for a beer.
Honestly, there's probably a sizeable 'market' for 'fairly broad interest group of strangers goes to a pub'.
The practical problem with this is that services are at, what 9 in the morning on a sunday? The only communion i have any interest in taking at that time is with the cold side of the pillow.
But say the holy spirit [1] moves me to overcome that. Then what? "Yeah miss me with the biscuits padre, i'm just here for the bants!", not sure how well this is going to go down.
[1] whisky
They, of course, hope to "convert" you. Many seem to take pride in never "giving up" on someone no matter how long it takes.
But yes, going just to meet people is the wrong attitude, but better than not going.
> Using hobbies is a great way to make friends if you enjoy that hobby
That is literally the exactly same thing as books club. Books club is not special, it is yet another hobby used for socialization.
You don't go to gym to meet people, because gym is individual activity. But people do go to sports clubs to sport a bit and chat a lot.
I think this can be said for many group-class-like workouts though.
For example, I've met plenty of neighborhood friends by going to live music nights at nearby bars and restaurants. The music was an "excuse" to go to a place I didn't know anyone.
In my city, there's also been bar nights specifically about meeting people, think speed dating but without the emphasis on dating.
Everywhere is my guess.
Some examples:
1. People go to their “local”. You probably already know people there, but you don’t when you first go if you are new to the area.
2. When you are out of town. Bars near convention centers can great places to meet interesting people. My local happens to be one.
3. When the bar has a theme you and your tribe like. It’s an easy way to meet new people you like. In larger cities, the bar scene is constantly evolving.
4. For live music. Having lived in Austin, there are great shows every night of the week. Yes, you usually invite friends, but there are some shows that I would not miss even if my friends didn’t want to go.
5. After a long day, I will sometimes choose to go to a bar alone and that is not likely to have anyone I know as customers. Sometimes I want to be around people and have a drink, but I don’t want to interact with anyone.
6. Same as 5, but I just want to read a long-form essay or a book.
I’m sure there are more.
Alternate theories are...
1. I'm doing it wrong.
2. I'm going to big city bars where people don't talk to strangers.
I've never been to a book club, but at least it's an event specifically for people to talk to each other.
Try sitting at the bar itself. Assuming you are at a social bar rather than a speed bar (i.e., one where they are slinging drinks at a mile a minute), a good bartender will talk to you a bit, and that’s often a way to get the ball rolling.
I will also add that some bars are more social than others, even though they may seem very similar on the surface. I don’t really know why, but it could be the clientele, it could be the bartenders, or it could just be that specified time/day.
But seriously, some of them have nice online community and discussion. I’m not familiar with the term “shared class” and an internet search didn’t reveal anything specific.
First of all, the group I'm in tends to read mostly non-fiction books about history, philosophy, science, social issues, and economics. I've never thought about it before, but this is perhaps one big reason why people can drop in and have a good discussion even if they didn't read the book. People have opinions about these subjects and personal experiences that are often interesting even if they didn't read "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" or "Why Buddhism is True".
That said, it can also get frustrating and annoying at times, particularly when people pile on with counter-arguments that the author has already carefully addressed. Then I sometimes find myself having to articulate a low-fidelity version of the author's argument and defend it, when the book obviously does a better version of that. I tend to see these experiences as just part of the price for this kind of book group.
We make other trade-offs as well. The group is advertised on Meetup and it's a part of a secular humanist organization I'm in, which means people come for all kinds of reasons. Maybe they saw the book and were intrigued by it, others are curious about or identify with humanism in general, occasionally people seem to be new to the US and want to practice their English and reading. These different groups are inconsistent in their attendance as you can imagine. There's a core group that came for whatever reason and got "drawn in" with the community and the types of discussions and come back most months. Then there are people who only come if they liked that particular book. Then there are people we'll never see again.
In other words, we have a higher churn rate than the "group of friends" or "high commitment" book clubs probably do, so we need to bring in more people. But this also has its advantages, because I meet all kinds of people in jobs, age groups, and parts of the bay area that I would never normally meet, and hear interesting stories from different walks of life.
Overall I think our club serves a good purpose - it gets people out of the house, meeting others, and learning something new from a book each month, even if we're not "sucking the marrow out" of the book and only getting a more superficial benefit.
Okay, I need to find me a book club like this. That sounds legit amazing. I sort of assumed book clubs were always about novels. On the other hand, I'm not sure how easy it is to find book clubs in Germany ...
I think every hobby related group I have participated has had that to a certain extent. During sports activities people talk about other stuff. At the gym, people joke around. In debates club when I was in school we talked about other stuff. Hell, even at a hackathon, maybe 5-10% of the conversation is not about the app or the hackathon. Even the journal club in grad school always started and ended with non-science talk. I have never been frustrated.
People are social, and there is value to creating multifaceted connections with other people.
It can be helpful if expectations are out there (and people are a little flexible).
> Book club, for us, isn’t about reading the same book; it’s about reading a book together.
> The idea is to make book club less an obligation than a sort of pleasant presence in our lives, this thing that’s always there.
> That’s another reason to break a book into pieces: better to have too little to fit into a session than too much; god forbid you read something complex and demanding — do you really want to spend three hours in the unpacking, or to have the session break down before the unpacking’s done?
I agree with the author's conclusions - and have a book club that operates the same way. And I agree with him because it's a better social experience. (A chance to catch up with others with happen to share book reading as a hobby without needing to do homework.)
- Will new people be willing to join in the middle of a book?
- If people don't like the book, do they just have to stick around for the next N meetings? If not, does it lose its place in their routine causing them to forget about it?
I think these concerns may be specific to more "open-access" book groups that anyone can join, rather than long-running groups of existing friends.
However, if you’re doing it long-term, I much prefer just talking about what you’re reading right now. Over time, you will start to read each other’s recommendations and the discussion will catch up.
I’m sure there are a lot of ways to do this. (OH and it’s awesome that you fessed up about skimming the article - I am there with you the rest of the time. :D)
Mistaking “book club” for “book class” isn’t a small category error.
He's written articles like https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship... which was one of the best pieces of writing on technology and humans that I've read recently. This is not the work of a recluse (the undesirable negative connotations aside).
I mean he's the one telling people that they're doing their hobby 'wrong'... I’m sure he can accept criticism if he’s going to issue it uninvited himself.
Sometimes you need to pretend that you're being responsible!
I think overall this is probably good for the clubs, assuming it's easy to create a new one. A bunch of smaller groups seems more pleasant than one increasingly unwieldy group.
That applies to all repeated social events, doesn't it?
Unless it is something that has an annual "new class", but that's also a "right time".
“‘Formerly, when a New England family convoked a ‘bee’ (that is, a meeting for working in common), it was for all concerned one of the most pleasurable times of the year. The work was scarcely more than a pretext for coming together.’ The activity of sustaining social relations and human contacts predominated over the technical scheme of things and the obligation to work, which were secondary causes.”
and drink wine or coffee!