5 creative book club ideas to spice up your next meetings

Even if you want to admit it or not, books enrich our lives and souls in many ways. They are our best friends and the best allies that give us strength and encouragement during difficult times. Books teach us how it is to feel anger, happiness, delight, and sadness at the same time and also help us to rediscover ourselves. But do you know what’s even greater than reading a good book that provokes so many feelings in us? The opportunity to share it with the people who have the same passion as we have. And this is why book clubs were invented.

Through book clubs; book lovers all around the world like to gather and discuss their favorite novels, characters, plots, and imagine together another ending for the story. It’s a really great way to stay connected with people who also enjoy literature, storytelling, and everything related to these topics. By joining or starting a book club; you expand your horizons and feel that you’re doing something productive and cultural for a couple of hours. And you’ll never have this miserable feeling that you’re wasting your time or life.

Today’s article gives you some book club ideas that can really boost your next meetings. Be it the owner of a book club or a simple attendee; take them into consideration and make the most of them in the future. You’ll see how enjoyable and accessible they are. Being part of a book club has never been more thrilling!

Top 5 book club ideas to boost your next meetings:

1. Choose a different book genre every month

We can all admit that it’s really difficult to choose a book every month that would appeal to all club members. You know what they say, so many different people, so many different tastes. One of the best solutions that would please everybody would be to choose a book of a different genre every month. For instance; in January you can have a mystery novel, in February a romance, in March a thriller, in April a  Sci-Fi and so on. And you can give everyone the opportunity to choose the desired book and genre.

In this regard; the book club will remain fresh and exciting and you all will discover books and authors you may never have taken into account. The sky is the limit when you have to pick a good book. Next time someone asks for some book club suggestions that could make some improvements, don’t forget to mention this one too!

2. Match the book you’re currently reading with food

I can bet you’ll all consider this suggestion one of the best book club ideas ever! Where there is food, there’s love…. and life! If books are supposed to feed your mind and soul; there also has to be real food for your body as well. One way of deciding the food for each meeting is to choose some dish based on a detail or paragraph from the book. For instance, let’s take the novel Moby Dick. There’s a whole chapter in the book dedicated to piping hot clam and cod chowder! So, for your next meeting, you could all prepare a dish based on seafood. Wouldn’t that be tasty?

Another better suggestion in this respect would be to read a cookbook once in a while and to cook dishes from that book. You’ll learn together more recipes and you’ll discover how the same dish can be cooked differently by various people. Try this idea at your next meeting and see how it works. It’s good from time to time to add a “cool” factor to an ordinary book club; so you can make it extraordinary!

3. Always discuss personal impressions based on the book you’re reading

Remember that personal impressions are always a must within a book club. It’s often said that when you read a book you connect personally with it and it’s hard to let it go after you finish it; that’s why it’s therapeutic to discuss it with someone who has read it and understands your thoughts and feelings completely. It’s also a great activity that gives everyone the freedom to express their own ideas and perceptions.

For instance, talk about your favorite characters or your favorite episode within the book. Speculate a better ending to the plot or critique the cover of the book. You could all read the passage you like most and then comment on it. It’s nice to hear how different people perceive things and how different they think. Another game you could play is to read a dialogue and ask members to guess which character said it. This is really fun!

If you want instead to keep the discussion more serious; stick to questions such as “Did the book affect you in a personal way?”, What kind of person do you think would like this book?” or “Would you read this book again?” The questions are endless, really. There are so many topics you could approach when analyzing a book thoroughly. When thinking of book club ideas that could improve your level of entertainment or culture, please remember this one too!

4. Bring a popular author to the book club once in a while

Believe it or not, author chats are unusually easy to organize. These special chats could be the highlight of your book club year; by means of which it can become more popular and entertaining. I’m not sure if you knew this or not; but authors enjoy discussing their own books and sharing thoughts regarding their characters and plot. It makes them feel more important and special. And if they can’t come personally to your meetings, maybe they’ll agree to do it via Skype or similar tools. Feel free to contact them through their website and see what happens. You never know if you never try! I’m sure that everyone in your literature group will be excited about this amazing book club suggestion.

5. Take advantage of the online book clubs

We’re living in the 21st century; so of course that we are going to talk about ebooks and online book clubs! They are a real trend nowadays. There are many book clubs that also embrace the digital version of a literature group and bring together bookworms from far away countries.

It’s very advantageous to attend an online book club because there are many free digital books that you can find on the internet; and if you happen to be in a different country, you can still join their meetings via Skype. All it takes is a laptop, a webcam, a fast internet connection, and a coordinated schedule and voila! You’re all set. But of course; it’s not the same as being there in the same room with other attendees where you can socialize and involve actively. Since there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides; I would encourage you to attend or start a physical book club and then to also run it digitally. What an amazing book club suggestion, right?

One of the greatest benefits of an online book club is the fact that you can post a digital summary of the next book you’re all going to read; so that the members get a full picture of the novel. Or you can post short stories or even full novels for the online members and people who choose to visit your online book club. Wondering how to do such a thing? Glad you asked! Flipsnack is the best online publishing platform that transforms your PDFs into flipbooks within minutes. And you can easily embed them on your website, so everyone can have access to read them.

User testimonial who owns an online book club

Reinhardt Christiansen is the owner of a small book club in Canada that uses Flipsnack since 2014 and is really content about it. Read his short testimonial about Flipsnack where he explains briefly his experience with our app:

We were in the process of reviving an old paper-based fanzine that we had published in the 80s and 90s and had decided to publish it digitally instead of on paper. In the process of looking at various formats and assessing them for how easy it would be for visitors to our website to use them; I came across the idea of a flipbook…I stumbled on Flipsnack, which offered to do the whole process with minimal effort on our part for free as long as we kept the length of each flipbook down to 15 or 16 pages.

This was a perfect solution for us given our extremely limited finances. We really like the simplicity and convenience of the Flipsnack interface. It only takes a couple of minutes to do the conversion and then modify our website to include the new embed link. It’s hard to imagine the process getting any easier and the price is certainly right!

Book clubs are fun, entertaining and help you develop both your mind and soul. They also help you make new friends and become more sociable and open-minded. But how about spicing up a little bit the things? Don’t you want to try something new at your next meeting? You have to think outside the box in order to come up with extraordinary and creative book club ideas for your members. There is always room for improvement; so I really encourage you to try today’s book club suggestions and see what happens! And don’t forget; Flipsnack is always at your disposal if you want to rock your online book club with useful and accessible flipbooks! Happy reading, everyone!