I’ve been in three book clubs over the past fifteen years. The first one lasted four months. The second one lasted about a year. The third one is still going, seven years and counting, and it’s one of the things I look forward to most in any given month. The difference between the first two (which died) and the third (which thrived) has almost nothing to do with the books we read and almost everything to do with how the group is structured.

Book clubs have experienced a resurgence in recent years, partly driven by celebrity book clubs (Oprah’s Book Club, Reese’s Book Club) and partly by a broader cultural desire for in-person social connection in the aftermath of years spent staring at screens. But starting a book club is easy. Keeping one alive past the six-month mark is hard. Most book clubs fizzle within their first year, and the ones that survive tend to share certain characteristics that have nothing to do with literary taste and everything to do with group dynamics, logistics, and expectations.

I’m going to walk through why book clubs work, why they fail, and how to build one that lasts. This draws on my own experience, on conversations with our authors who’ve been guests at book clubs around the country, and on the practical realities of organizing a group of busy adults to read the same book and show up in the same place once a month.

Why Book Clubs Work

The simplest explanation for why book clubs work is that they add a social dimension to what’s normally a solitary activity. Reading a book alone is one experience. Reading the same book knowing that you’ll discuss it with six or eight people next Tuesday is a different experience entirely. The anticipation of discussion changes how you read. You notice things you’d otherwise skip over. You form opinions more deliberately. You mark passages, not because you need them for anything, but because you want to share them with the group.

This social accountability also simply makes people read more. In my book club, I finish books I might otherwise have abandoned, because I know I’ll be expected to have opinions about them. This has led to some of my best reading experiences. Books that I wasn’t enjoying at page fifty turned out to be remarkable by page two hundred, and I only got to page two hundred because the club was waiting for me. The gentle pressure of a shared commitment pushes you past the point where you’d normally give up, and sometimes what’s on the other side of that resistance is extraordinary.

There’s also the simple pleasure of talking about ideas with people you like. Good book club discussions aren’t literary criticism. They’re conversations, wide-ranging and personal and often surprising. Someone connects a novel to their own life experience. Someone else brings up a historical context that changes how the whole group understands a passage. Someone admits they hated the book and explains why, and the ensuing debate is more interesting than the book itself. These conversations create a kind of intellectual intimacy that’s hard to find elsewhere in adult life.

Why Most Book Clubs Die

My first book club died because nobody would commit to showing up. We started with eight people, enthusiastic and full of plans. By the third meeting, only four showed up. By the fourth meeting, it was three, and one of them hadn’t read the book. We tried moving the date, tried meeting less frequently, tried shorter books. Nothing worked. People were busy, or they’d lost interest, or they just couldn’t prioritize it. By month five, we stopped scheduling meetings and the group dissolved without anyone officially ending it.

My second book club died for a different reason: the discussions were boring. Everyone was too polite. We’d go around the table saying “I liked it” or “I thought it was interesting,” and nobody would disagree or dig deeper. The conversations felt performative, like we were auditioning for the role of “cultured person who reads books” rather than actually engaging with the material. After a few months of surface-level discussion, the meetings started to feel like an obligation rather than a pleasure, and people drifted away.

From talking to friends and colleagues whose book clubs have failed, these are the two most common causes of death: attendance problems and boring discussions. Fortunately, both can be addressed with some structural planning at the outset.

How to Start a Book Club That Lasts: The Practical Stuff

Let me go through the logistics first, because getting the logistics right prevents about 80% of book club failures.

Size matters. My thriving book club has six members. I think six to eight is the sweet spot. Fewer than five, and a single absence guts the discussion. More than ten, and the conversation becomes unwieldy. People don’t get enough airtime. Side conversations start. The group fragments into smaller groups, and you lose the coherence that makes a book club work.

Choose a fixed day and time, and don’t change it. Our club meets the first Wednesday of every month at 7:30 PM. It’s been the first Wednesday at 7:30 PM for seven years. Everyone knows it. Everyone plans around it. If you can’t make it, you miss that month. We don’t reschedule, ever. This sounds rigid, and it is. But the rigidity is what keeps the club alive. The moment you start negotiating dates by email, trying to find a time that works for everyone, you’ve entered the death spiral. There will never be a time that works for everyone. Pick a time, commit to it, and accept that some people will occasionally miss a meeting.

Rotate hosting. In our club, whoever chose the book hosts the meeting at their home. This distributes the logistical burden and keeps the experience varied. Different spaces produce different conversations. There’s something about the host’s environment, their bookshelves, their furniture, the snacks they provide, that subtly shapes the atmosphere of each meeting.

Set a minimum attendance commitment upfront. When we formed our club, we agreed that everyone would attend at least eight of the twelve annual meetings. If you can’t commit to that, you’re not in the club. This sounds harsh, but it’s prevented the attendance problem that killed my first club. Everyone knows they’re expected to be there, and that expectation is reinforced by the fact that it was established as a condition of membership from the beginning.

How to Choose Books (Without Starting a War)

Book selection is the most politically fraught aspect of running a book club. Everyone has different tastes. Everyone has strong opinions about what’s worth reading. Left unmanaged, the selection process can generate resentment that poisons the whole group. Here’s how we handle it, and I think our system works well.

We rotate selection. Each month, a different member chooses the book. When it’s your month, you have absolute authority. You can pick a novel, a memoir, a history book, a graphic novel, a collection of essays. The only rule is that it should be available in paperback or e-book (no out-of-print rarities that cost $75 to find) and it should be under 500 pages (we tried a 700-page novel once, and half the group couldn’t finish it in time).

The absolute authority part is what makes this system work. There’s no voting, no debate, no compromise. When it’s your turn, you pick what you want. This means that everyone reads things they wouldn’t have chosen themselves, which is half the point of a book club. It also means that if you hate a book, you only have to endure it once, and then it’s someone else’s turn to pick something you’ll probably love.

Some of my best reading experiences have come from books chosen by other members of the group. A historical mystery I never would have picked up. A memoir by an athlete whose sport I don’t follow. A work of popular science about a subject I thought I had no interest in. The forced exposure to unfamiliar books is one of the book club’s greatest gifts.

One suggestion: I’d encourage new book clubs to start with books that are accessible and discussion-friendly rather than difficult or obscure. Building the group’s confidence in discussion is more important, in the early months, than proving your literary credentials. Pick books that provoke opinions. Pick books that are well-written enough to reward attention but not so challenging that half the group gives up. Once the group has found its rhythm, you can introduce more ambitious choices.

For what it’s worth, some of our most lively discussions at ScrollWorks-related book events have been around books from our own catalog. Still Waters by Elena Marsh generates passionate disagreements about the protagonist’s choices. The Cartographer’s Dilemma by David Okonkwo raises questions about representation and knowledge that can fuel hours of conversation. And Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners by Alexander Hawthorne, while non-fiction, has sparked some of the most heated debates I’ve witnessed in a group setting, because people have strong feelings about money and technology.

How to Have Better Discussions

This is where most book clubs fail even if the logistics are solid. The meeting happens, everyone has read the book, and then… silence. Or worse, a round-robin of pleasant but shallow reactions that doesn’t produce genuine conversation.

The person who chose the book should come prepared with five or six discussion questions. Not generic questions pulled from a reading guide (“What did you think of the main character?”) but specific, opinionated questions that invite disagreement. For example: “The author argues that X caused Y. Do you buy it, or do you think they’re overstating the case?” Or: “The protagonist lies to her sister in chapter four. Is she right to do so? What would you have done?” Questions that have a clear yes-or-no dimension work well because they create immediate debate. Once people start disagreeing, the conversation tends to take care of itself.

A good discussion leader also knows when to let the conversation run and when to redirect it. Some tangents are productive: a comment about a character’s decision leads to a broader conversation about moral reasoning that enriches everyone’s understanding of the book. Other tangents are just tangents: someone starts talking about their vacation and suddenly nobody’s discussing the book anymore. The discussion leader’s job is to gently steer the conversation back to the text without being heavy-handed about it.

Encourage disagreement. I can’t stress this enough. The best book club discussions I’ve been part of have involved genuine, respectful disagreement. Two members arguing passionately about whether a novel’s ending was earned or cheap. Someone defending a book that everyone else disliked, and doing it so well that opinions shift. Someone articulating exactly why a book didn’t work for them in a way that changes how the group thinks about it. These moments of productive friction are where the real value of a book club lives.

To make disagreement feel safe, the group needs a culture of respect. Disagreeing with someone’s interpretation is fine. Dismissing their response or making them feel stupid for liking (or disliking) a book is not. In our club, we’ve had members with very different literary tastes who disagree regularly and respectfully. The trust that enables that disagreement was built over time, through repeated demonstrations that having a minority opinion doesn’t get you mocked or marginalized.

The Social Glue

A book club is, at its core, a group of friends (or soon-to-be friends) who meet regularly. The books are the occasion for meeting, but the relationships are the reason the club endures. If you don’t like the people in your book club, no amount of structural optimization will make you want to show up every month.

My thriving book club works because I genuinely enjoy spending time with the other five members. Some of them are close friends. Some I know primarily through the club. But all of them are people whose company I find stimulating, whose opinions I respect even when I disagree with them, and whose presence makes my month better. The books are wonderful, but if we sat in a room and talked about anything, I’d still show up.

This means that choosing your founding members wisely is the most consequential decision you’ll make. Don’t invite someone because they “should” be in a book club. Invite people who are curious, opinionated, and good at conversation. A brilliant reader who never speaks in group settings won’t add much to the discussion. A less avid reader who asks great questions and listens thoughtfully can be the best member you have.

Mix up the social dynamics. A book club made up entirely of people who know each other well from another context (all coworkers, all parents from the same school) will import the dynamics of that other context into the club. The hierarchy from work, the social politics of the school gate, these things follow people into new settings. A mix of people from different parts of your life creates a fresher, more egalitarian dynamic where the book is the primary shared reference point rather than a pre-existing social structure.

Dealing With Common Problems

Even the best book clubs encounter recurring challenges. Here’s how we’ve dealt with the most common ones.

The member who never finishes the book. In our club, we’ve made it clear that you don’t have to finish the book to attend the meeting. If you got halfway through and couldn’t continue, come anyway. You can still participate in the discussion about the first half, and hearing the group discuss the second half might motivate you to finish, or it might confirm that the book wasn’t for you. Either way, you’re present, and presence matters more than completion.

The member who dominates the conversation. Every group has one (or fears developing one). The discussion leader can manage this by directing questions to specific people: “Sarah, you haven’t said anything about this yet. What did you think?” This isn’t rude; it’s facilitation. Most conversation-dominators don’t realize they’re doing it, and they’re usually grateful when the leader creates space for other voices.

The meeting that turns into a dinner party. Our meetings always include food and drink, and the first thirty minutes are pure socializing: catching up, pouring wine, settling in. But at some point, usually around the forty-minute mark, the discussion leader says “should we talk about the book?” and we shift into the discussion. This transition can feel awkward if it’s not established as routine. In our club, everyone expects it, so it happens naturally. The socializing is important (it’s part of the glue), but the book discussion is the purpose, and honoring that purpose is what makes the evening feel meaningful rather than just pleasant.

The book that everyone hates. This actually produces some of the best meetings. When a group unanimously dislikes a book, the conversation often turns to why it doesn’t work, which leads to thoughtful discussion about what good writing looks like and what we value as readers. The member who chose the book might feel defensive, so the group should be generous about it. Sometimes a book you love doesn’t land with other people, and that’s fine. The discussion of why it didn’t land is often more interesting than the discussion of a book everyone mildly enjoyed.

Online and Hybrid Book Clubs

The pandemic forced many book clubs online, and some have stayed there, either fully or in a hybrid format. I have mixed feelings about this. Online meetings work. I’ve participated in Zoom book clubs that had excellent discussions. But something is lost when the group isn’t physically together. The side conversations before and after the meeting, the body language, the way someone’s expression changes when they’re about to disagree: these non-verbal elements contribute to the richness of in-person discussion in ways that video calls can’t replicate.

That said, online book clubs have a significant advantage: they eliminate geography as a constraint. You can have members in different cities, different states, different countries. If you can’t find six people in your immediate area who want to join a book club, you can almost certainly find six people in your broader network who would. The barrier to showing up is lower (no commute, no babysitter), which can actually improve attendance.

If you go the online route, I’d suggest keeping the group small (five or six people maximum, because larger groups are chaotic on video calls) and using the same fixed-schedule approach I described earlier. And consider meeting in person at least once or twice a year if geographically possible. Even one annual in-person gathering can strengthen the personal bonds that make the club worth sustaining.

Starting Yours

If you’ve been thinking about starting a book club, stop thinking and start texting. Send a message to five people you’d enjoy discussing books with. Propose a date, a location, and a first book. Keep it simple. The first meeting doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to happen.

For your first book, pick something recent, well-reviewed, and rich enough to sustain a conversation but accessible enough that nobody feels overwhelmed. If you’re looking for suggestions from our catalog, The Last Archive by Catherine Voss is a novel that generates strong reactions and divergent interpretations, which is exactly what a new book club needs for its first discussion.

Seven years into my own book club, I can tell you this: it has enriched my reading life, my social life, and my thinking in ways I couldn’t have predicted when we started. The books are wonderful, but what I value most is the monthly practice of sitting in a room with people I like and talking seriously about ideas. In a culture that incentivizes speed, distraction, and superficiality, that practice feels increasingly rare and increasingly necessary. A book club is a small, stubborn act of resistance against all the forces that discourage deep engagement. And it’s fun. Don’t forget that part. It’s supposed to be fun.

Published by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team.