Book clubs are a great way to share your reading experience with others, discussing your thoughts through lively debate and discussion. Or at least so it goes in theory. In reality, book clubs can be difficult to maintain and often don’t last longer than a couple of meetings.

Eastlondonlines spoke to a book club that met online and now meet at a pub in Lewisham, a group of friends in Hackney who have met up regularly for over 20 years, a charity which organises book clubs in schools and a popular book club exclusively for Muslim women based in Tower Hamlets and asked them all: what are the secrets of a successful book club? This is what they told us.

Make sure it’s members only 

First off, you need to decide who is going to be part of your book club. Whether it’s your closest friends or complete strangers, you need to set up some parameters.

Dave Green is a Lewisham resident who runs New Cross Book Club, which meets once a month at the Shirker’s Rest pub in New Cross. It is open to anyone and is organised on the event-planning website meetup.com. Here it’s important to be welcoming as anyone who RSVP’s to the event can show up –which has clearly worked as New Cross Book Club started in 2016 and is still going strong. 

Alison Marks is a solicitor in Hackney whose book club of seven women has been meeting for over 20 years and represents the other end of the spectrum: “It’s quite exclusionary really,” says Marks. “We are quite fussy about who is in it and we’ve been careful about who joins in case it changes the dynamic.” This is a tight knit group of friends who have been through “life, death and illness” together. Oh, and no men are allowed either, which is “probably a plus,” says Marks. 

The Amaliah Book Club is somewhere between these poles. Amaliah.com is a media site for Muslim women and their book club is a space to discuss topics specific to Muslim women. They recently read As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh and founder Nafisa Bakkar says: “We spoke about the theme of belonging and fighting for your country and we have people whose ethnicity were from Egypt, Afghanistan, Mali, Tanzania, India, Somalia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan – it made for an incredible discussion!” 

There is no correct way of choosing who should be in your book club, but defining it early on will prevent any confusion.

Chose your books wisely

After assembling a group, the next step is deciding what you are going to read.

There’s no shame in not tackling Ulysses from the get-go. Green’s advice is “short-ish recent fiction from the last 10-20 years” and if it’s an audiobook “less than 10 hours is good”. Dave’s motto for choosing books is: ”an obvious plot will get you through a lack of fancy writing more often than fancy writing will get you through a lack of obvious plot.” 

Democracy is important. Ali Palmer runs the charity Book Clubs in Schools, which works in Tower Hamlets, and she says: “If you had a bit of say in the book, even if you don’t like it you’ll feel more inclined to read it.” She says it’s about respect and reciprocation since “nobody likes to have a book imposed on them.”

Choosing books that will resonate with your members is also important. The Amaliah Book Club tends to pick books by people of colour and women. This Ramadan they are hosting a special book club meeting with author Aliyah Umm Raiyaan about her book Ramadan Reflections. Palmer’s charity works with assembling a diverse book list that reflects the people that read it. “We recently read a book by a Nigerian author and a kid said they’d never seen that before”, says Palmer.

Another tip when choosing a book is to remember that you can be flexible. “We’ve started books and someone will go ‘I really hate this’ and we’ve all gone ‘yeah I hate it too’ and then we’ve changed,” says Marks. But your book club is also a chance to read new books and broaden your horizons. Marks’ book club recently had such an experience: “Somebody chose Thomas Hardy’s Far from The Madding Crowd and at first everyone was like ‘Oh god, this is really hard, do we really want to do this’, but then everyone read it and absolutely loved it. I’m really glad she made us read that.”

Lay some ground rules 

Now that you’ve chosen your members and what books you are reading, it’s time to lay some ground rules. Palmer says that in her book clubs the children get to make up their own rules, “but they are always the same: take turns, listen, be respectful.” These are rules that all the experts agree on. But what are some rules for making the meetings run smoothly?

First, make sure you have consistency in how you start your meetings. At the beginning of every meeting Bakkar says that they have “icebreaker intros, we take half an hour or so where everyone introduces themselves and tells us what they thought about the book. It’s a good way to know what themes people are interested in.” For New Cross Book Club, Green’s advice is to always begin each meeting with every person getting a chance to speak and list what they liked rather than “just an overview or score out of 10, as you can get drawn into lively but inconclusive discussions of whether the book is good or not,” says Green.

Giving your book club some structure is important. The Amaliah Book Club uses a facilitator to guide the discussion, in this case it is author Yassmin Abdel-Magied: “She is absolutely brilliant in ensuring everyone gets to make a contribution, managing the dynamic in the room and ensuring those who might be reserved or shy get their say”, says Bakkar. Even Marks’ tight knit group makes sure each member takes turns to run the meeting: “It can become a bit wishy-washy when you’re at a friend’s house, so we take it in turns, each person chooses, hosts and cooks a light supper and then the person who chose gives a presentation of the book”, says Marks.

Experts agreed that there is no reason for rigid rules – but a bit of structure will help you along the way. 

Make sure you feel comfortable

Untangling your thoughts about a book and then verbalising them can be difficult. It’s important that you feel comfortable to do so.

For Palmer, book clubs are used as a way to discuss difficult topics: “Some conversations you might feel more comfortable discussing because you’re reading about it in a novel. If a book has some knife crime, kids might have experiences with this, within a book club setting you can talk about that but not in a heavy handed way.” 

Marks says that the friendship in their group chat is integral to making their meetings feel comfortable: “Sometimes you are revealing quite a lot about yourself, about your life and your experiences and why a book made you feel sad, so you have to be surrounded by people you don’t mind opening up to.” This is important for having any sort of discussion or debate, “sometimes it gets quite heated”, says Marks. “There are times when I’ve thought I don’t want to do it anymore… but the most boring meetings are when we all agree!”

This also extends to the physical space you are in. Bakkar says a key element is “a cozy atmosphere, we host it in Root 25 Coffee House which is a beautiful space with incredible tea, coffee and food.” If you decide to meet in a pub, avoid a Friday night. “Monday evenings tend to be less busy in some pubs”, says Dave. Once you’ve found a place that works, stick with it.

The Amaliah book club next meeting is on 26 April and they are reading Sudanese author Leila Aboulela’s new novel River Spirit. You can buy a ticket here. New Cross Book Club are next meeting on May 1 and they are reading Coming Of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi. You can RSVP to the event here.

If you’re still struggling to find anything to read, check out these local independent book shops for inspiration.

Follow our series, Reading Between the Lines, this week to read more about literature across our boroughs