So we showed up. All different ages and backgrounds. Our ice breaker was simply talking about the books we like to read. That told me a lot about them in a very short ampount of time.

We do that now after every meeting.. we talk about the books we’ve read during the month and the newbies always feel at home.

I joined a Bible study a year ago and within the first two weeks I’d made a good friend. She and I realized our mutual love for books (a lot of the same books, actually), so we invited a few others from the Bible study to join us. Add in a couple of our other friends and it’s become a pretty good group (8-ish people, usually). Usually it’s all girls, but every once in a while we’ll get a guy or two. We vote on book choices and rotate houses. There is always wine. It’s one of my favorite nights each month.

It has been a really great experience. Now many of the people in the club are my best friends so it was nice to meet new people since I was new to the area. Because we’re all friends, we always end up chatting about other stuff and snacking on the food everyone brings for a while, and then we start to talk about the book. We usually start the conversation by asking the person who chose the book why they chose it.

One thing that works really well for us is rotating who chooses the book and who hosts the meetings. We don’t vote on the books like some clubs do. This way, we get to read a wide variety of books. I never would have picked up No Country for Old Men if one of the people in book club didn’t choose it.

So the book club I helped form last year consists of all friends. We knew each other from our old job that most of us have now moved on from. We’ve lost a few members, and added a few new ones. But since everyone was friends first or friends of friends, we all got along exceedingly well. We’ve been meeting every month since August 09 now, and are still going strong.

We have fewer members now (started with 8, went down to 4, and are at 5 now). But to be honest, I really like the current size. We are all very dedicated – so 5 might be an issue with a different group if some members couldn’t make each month. We’re also all VERY talkative so 5 is a good number – everyone has a chance to say what they’d like to say.

I like the set up of yours and hope you have fun! Even though they don’t all know each other, they are all friends of yours so I bet it will be a good group with a lot in common – so you’re likely to become pretty close.

Looking forward to hearing about how it went!

I am in a second book group that just started up about a year or so ago. It runs in a similar fashion and that seems to work well.

Good luck with the group! I’d say each of you could add one more friend, then you’ll have variety and numbers.