Book Club Experience

 

I observed the Mystery Loves Company book club at Hamilton East Public Library.  It is described as a mystery group, but most of their selections were thriller/suspense novels. This is a well-established group with a seasoned librarian leader, but there were also some new participants in attendance. The group met at the library's Noblesville location in a corporate style meeting room. The chairs were set up around tables in a "U" shape. Participants wrote their names on a paper tent that sat in front of them on the table. There were 13 in-person plus four video attendees.  No snacks or drinks were provided.

The meeting began with introductions of everyone in attendance. This took awhile, but it gave everyone a chance to talk. In an established group, the leader did well to remember what it's like to be the new person as suggested by Bies (2019). This introduction time is when I realized a fellow student from this class was also in attendance! It was great to meet a classmate in real life!

The book discussed at this meeting was The Night Shift by Alex Finlay (2022). During the discussion, the leader impressed me with her ability to keep members talking without a list a questions in front of her! Members were obviously comfortable chiming in and offering opinions. In a lull, the leader directed attention to any member who had not previously spoken, including video participants, giving everyone a chance to voice their opinion at some point. Speaking of video participants, this was another element done well by the leader. Her integration of them into the discussion felt seamless to me. They weren't mere observers; they were able to join in at any time. Her primary question was the open-ended "What did you think of the book?" Answers could be anything the attendee wanted to highlight. The group was talkative enough, and there were enough participants, that this is all she had to ask to prompt discussion. The leader would do her best to answer questions from participants, but also allowed space for members to offer answers to each other.  She definitely functioned more as a facilitator than a participant, although you could tell she had read the book (Hoffert, 2019).  Of course some talked more than others, but no one stole the show. The most entertaining part of the discussion was the groups' opinion of the author's choice to make the detective 8 months pregnant with twins. This group of all women berated the male author for this very unlikely scenario.

The meeting ended by handing out the book for next month and making plans for how to share the copies if there weren't enough to go around.  I enjoyed observing how someone else leads a discussion.  I lead two book clubs at my library, so this was a nice break for me. My only disappointment was that I did not have a chance to read the book, so I couldn't join in the discussion. I left feeling challenged to be less dependent on a list of questions and to be more intentional about giving everyone a chance to speak.


References

Bies, A. (2019). Making a book discussion your own. ILA Reporter, 38(5), 22–23.

Finlay, A. (2022, March 1). The night shift. Minotaur Books.

Hoffert, B. (2019). The book club experience. Library Journal, 144(3), 30–33.