Bookgroups???

[ChrisC]

How do they work exactly? I want to know as I want to get friends who are into the same stuff as me. Starting a bookgroup would be one. But how does one do it and how does it work? I mean do you all read the same book and discuss it? Or do you read individual books and recommended it to each other? If I were to start one, I would like it to be in SF in nature with also the mundane thrown in for those who are not to in to SF, I'm not picky.

Bookgroups how do they work? Enlightenment please.

I'm thinking of trying to start something here in Durban, South Africa. Maybe I would increase my circle of friends as I have just emmigrated here and it's just what I need.

Advice please, thank you.

[spacecat]

I was in a bookclub for about a year and a half, but it formed out of an existing group of friends that had begun talking about what we were reading when we got together at parties. Recommending this or that book to each other, until it got organized into a monthly book choice and get together.

It was always interesting and fun too, because we were already friends, but there was a bias against fiction, against fiction for gods sake!

That was less that totally satisfying.
But it did get me to read nonfiction that I never would have picked up otherwise.

We used to just pick a book each month, letting the choice of books revolve through the group by encouraging suggestions from one and all, and making sure not to let the same person choose the book too often.

[admin]

My book group is about 2/3 fiction of the literary best seller genre and 1/3 non fiction. I loved 1491, wouldn't read My Year of Magical Thinking, because I don't need to be more depressed than I already am. It seems the non-fiction generates more interesting discussion. In the fiction, it is too often a case of "I liked it", "I hated it". Or, sometimes, everybody hates it -- it is amazing how bad well-reviewed literary best sellers can be.

The good thing is that I read some fiction that I would not read otherwise, such as "The Unicorn" (not fantasy), and our summer read is Anna Karenina, which I am greatly looking forward to, since I loved War and Peace.