MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Lit and MR Book Clubs

kansaskyle · 11-28-2017, 12:38 PM

I'm primarily a lurker to the Book Clubs. I did read one book, A Cold Day For Murder earlier this year. I have also participated in Goodreads groups and face-to-face book clubs in the past, and moderated book club discussions.

Recommendations

Find/create discussion questions - I posted more information and examples below. In summary, I think preset discussion questions would greatly enhance the actual discussion and give readers things to think about as they read the book.
Restructure the forum to promote discussion - As suggested, moving the Book Club to a top-level forum would potentially help attract more participants.

I also think posting separate threads for book discussion questions would help. I'm guessing 15 to 40 sub posts would be a bit overwhelming per book, but having something like "[Book Title] - General chat" and then a few (two to five) additional threads like "[Book Title] - Discussion Question #1" would help generate separate discussion on the books.

More info on finding/creating questions
What I felt was missing in the MR club was any worthwhile discussion for those that read the book. I looked over the discussion thread again for the book I read here on MR, and the majority of posts were people saying they liked/disliked the book. There wasn't much actual discussion. I did try to to spark some back-and-forth with a couple questions, but the one respondent didn't feel like it was his or her right to speculate. I felt like that was actually part of what we as readers can explore and discuss in a book club.

Many books and clubs have a set of questions they post about the book to generate discussion. Here is an external link for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book, which includes 15 suggested questions for book club discussion.

If the author/publisher don't have a ready made list, someone would need to generate a set of questions to the book, or we could always default to some generic questions like the 40 suggested here.

11-28-2017, 12:38 PM	#65
kansaskyle Addict Posts: 245 Karma: 765530 Join Date: Jan 2017 Location: Austin, TX Device: Kobo Aura One & Forma, Kindle Voyage, PW, and Oasis 3	I'm primarily a lurker to the Book Clubs. I did read one book, A Cold Day For Murder earlier this year. I have also participated in Goodreads groups and face-to-face book clubs in the past, and moderated book club discussions. Recommendations Find/create discussion questions - I posted more information and examples below. In summary, I think preset discussion questions would greatly enhance the actual discussion and give readers things to think about as they read the book. Restructure the forum to promote discussion - As suggested, moving the Book Club to a top-level forum would potentially help attract more participants. I also think posting separate threads for book discussion questions would help. I'm guessing 15 to 40 sub posts would be a bit overwhelming per book, but having something like "[Book Title] - General chat" and then a few (two to five) additional threads like "[Book Title] - Discussion Question #1" would help generate separate discussion on the books. More info on finding/creating questions What I felt was missing in the MR club was any worthwhile discussion for those that read the book. I looked over the discussion thread again for the book I read here on MR, and the majority of posts were people saying they liked/disliked the book. There wasn't much actual discussion. I did try to to spark some back-and-forth with a couple questions, but the one respondent didn't feel like it was his or her right to speculate. I felt like that was actually part of what we as readers can explore and discuss in a book club. Many books and clubs have a set of questions they post about the book to generate discussion. Here is an external link for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book, which includes 15 suggested questions for book club discussion. If the author/publisher don't have a ready made list, someone would need to generate a set of questions to the book, or we could always default to some generic questions like the 40 suggested here.