I (34M) get that people meet to discuss books they’ve read but in the UK it seems to be a certain demographic (in my experience older women) and when they talk about it then majority of the time it seems that they haven’t read the book or intend to read it. So what’s the point of a book club if not about primarily about books? Is it just an excuse to meet up with friends & chat?
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A lot of younger people use book tok or reddit or discord to chat about books. Ive never been to an irl book club but yes i can imagine the social aspect is a big part of it
The book club aspect is just a hook, the primary purpose is a social event with friends.
Wine
>Is it just an excuse to meet up with friends & chat?
Got it in one. You see all the regular posts on this sub where people ask how to make friends, how to find people to socialise with? Well, this is a way people do it.
girls just wanna have fun
Just wana get leathered like the rest of us
My wife went to one once, they spent 20 minutes talking about the book and 40 minutes talking about their lives. Very much just space to escape from the family and let your hair down i guess, nothing wrong with that.
I used to be in a face-to-face book club (run by a librarian) and it was tea and biscuits. It was primarily about the books. I’m in an online book club now but thinking about ducking out as it’s too big.
They just want an excuse to meet up, chat and drink; a book club sounds like a sophisticated way of doing that. Not all book clubs are like that though and there will be book clubs run by the sort of women you describe that are all about the books.
I think you get to an age where sitting around with other middle aged people drinking wine and chatting shit feels amazing. Comes to all of us eventually 🤣
Yeah it’s a meet up more than a “book club” in my experience.
Myself and the Wife casually run one, and about 50% will have read the book
It’s a nice evening though, because you usually still sit around and talk about THE book, then other books for a while before it turns into a general social thing
It’s nice 🙂
And a massive gear change from my usual nights out…
Books are in a wider sense a prism on the world.
Whether or not one reads the book carefully or not, it sparks thoughts about life and about the world that may lead to interesting discussions.
So it’s win-win- you might learn about the book, you might learn about the other people, you can emote about what matters to you and hear the same from others.
Well in my experience I am looking for a book club and every single book club in my city is run by gen zers who pick some Waterstones best seller for their next read. Maybe we need to be more proactive and set up the book clubs we wish to have?
The first rule of book club is that you don’t talk about book club
Been in a book club for 11 years. About 50/50 on male/female. We meet upstairs in a pub, but the whole 2-3 hours is chatting about the book or related books in break times. Also I joined at 24, and the age range is huge!
I didn’t realise our book group was so untypical: everyone reads the book, many research the author’s background and we usually end up having over 2 hours of pretty detailed discussion about the book. And wine. (We’re not barbarians).
My WI had a book club. They read the same genre all the time. Usually with MC’s having affairs or high pressure jobs which made them drink a lot. They usually had horrible partners as well.
My genre of story, Miss Peregrine, was too scary and not realistic enough. When I quizzed what she meant by not realistic enough, she couldn’t elaborate.
It made me laugh really. An invisible boy, one who can set fire to things, one who can float, a strong girl, gorgon twins, a boy who had bees living in him and one who can see the future in his dreams, weren’t realistic enough for her. That and the Hollows, the boy who can see the hollows and people who can change into birds, and she thought it might be realistic?
If you spend all the time just discussing the details of the book, you have missed the whole point of being around other people.
My wife does the same with a local cross stitch group. It’s a social group more than anything, she calls it ‘Stitch and Bitch’.
My Dad was the member of the pubs bobsledding team. He was 25 stone and 6ft7, in Cornwall where it snows about once every 10 years.
the only person I know in a book club is my mum, so that fits the demographic 😀
They (mostly) do try to read the book, but yeah it’s more just an excuse to have a social with friends.
A lot of wine too, hence the the joke on one of their bags: “my book club reads wine labels”
Hope this comment didn’t come across negatively, they have a great time 😀
Imo, the older you get, the more lonely you feel, so book club is one way to beat it
The book club I’m part of has a generally younger demographic, mid 20s to mid 30s, all women, but is a split of book chat and general social chat. We live on a fairly new estate, and a lot of us moved during the pandemic and aren’t from this town, so it’s actually been a great way to meet people locally.
We’ve had great chats about careers, interview tips, redundancy etc.
We have recently had some new members join, a couple of which are older so that may change the dynamic slightly
When my mother was in a book club it was very much “meet up, discuss the book for twenty minutes, chat for forty minutes”, which is what she wanted from it. I sometimes do the library organised book club which is much more “we will spend forty minutes discussing the book and then twenty minutes chatting” which is more my speed.
I think that most meet up based groups, for books, or crafts, are a way to get together and have a chat. There’s an organising centre (the book, the pottery, the crochet) and then it’s easy to get into conversation. It is hard to make friends as an adult, and this is a shortcut to getting over the awkward starting point.
My work has a book club that I went to twice on the occasions that they were discussing books that I have read and really enjoyed.
I never attended again as 2 people had read half the book and the other 8 didn’t even pick it up. Is a nice idea but wasn’t for me.
I thought this was going to be a thread filled with Seinfeld jokes. Utterly disappointed.
UK book clubs in tthe UK are like the church of England,just an excuse to drink tea and have a good natter. Nothing to do with the title of the club.
I have been in a book club for 18 years, we enjoy about 30 minutes discussing life in general and then the next hour to hour and a half discussing the book.
We keep a record, write down what everyone thinks of the book, and then each score the book out of 10 to then calculate the average score. We have the records for every book we have all read over 18 years.
About 80% of us have usually read the book or part of the book, although it’s not a requirement of attending. After we have discussed the book, we usually then all chat about other good books we have read over the course of the month or books we fancy reading.
Over the years, we have had others join the group. They give up after a couple of months because they assume it’s just an excuse for a drink and meeting up, only to find we are all genuinely discussing books.
Over the years, we have all become friends, but , our purpose for meeting is definitely books, reading, and trying books none of us would normally read.
Maybe, or perhaps to enhance the reading, but spoiler risk?
Just like all these clubs, whether it’s knitting, art, pottery or whatever else is mostly about a natter and a cuppa at a regular time