Really enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing! Any tips for finding a good bookclub? I’ve not used that website before but I’d expect it would be a good commitment mechanism for me as well.
I try not to do too much self-promotion, but I genuinely think that the book clubs I run are good options, and I’d be happy to have you join us. Libraries sometimes have in-person book clubs, so if you want something away from the internet you could ask your local librarian about book clubs. And sometimes some simple Googling is helpful too: various cities have some variation of ‘book club in a bar,’ ‘sci-fi book club,’ ‘professional development book club,’ etc. But I think it is fairly uncommon to have a book club that is online and relatively accessible, so I think that mine are a bit special (although I am certainly not unbiased).
I’ve browsed through bookclubs.com a bit, but my memory is that the majority of the book clubs on there seem to be some combination of fiction, local to a specific place, focused on topics that aren’t interesting to me, or defunct.
Another option that I haven’t really tried: instead of having a regular club, you could just occasionally make a post “I want to read [BOOK] and talk about it with people, so I’ll make a Google Calendar event for [DATE]. If you want to read it and talk about it, please join.” At least one person is doing that in the EA Anywhere Slack workspace in the #book-club channel. The trick is to find a book that is popular enough, and then to accept the fact that 50% to 80% of the people who RSVP simply won’t show up. But it could be a more iterative/incremental approach to get started.
Really enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing! Any tips for finding a good bookclub? I’ve not used that website before but I’d expect it would be a good commitment mechanism for me as well.
I try not to do too much self-promotion, but I genuinely think that the book clubs I run are good options, and I’d be happy to have you join us. Libraries sometimes have in-person book clubs, so if you want something away from the internet you could ask your local librarian about book clubs. And sometimes some simple Googling is helpful too: various cities have some variation of ‘book club in a bar,’ ‘sci-fi book club,’ ‘professional development book club,’ etc. But I think it is fairly uncommon to have a book club that is online and relatively accessible, so I think that mine are a bit special (although I am certainly not unbiased).
I’ve browsed through bookclubs.com a bit, but my memory is that the majority of the book clubs on there seem to be some combination of fiction, local to a specific place, focused on topics that aren’t interesting to me, or defunct.
Another option that I haven’t really tried: instead of having a regular club, you could just occasionally make a post “I want to read [BOOK] and talk about it with people, so I’ll make a Google Calendar event for [DATE]. If you want to read it and talk about it, please join.” At least one person is doing that in the EA Anywhere Slack workspace in the #book-club channel. The trick is to find a book that is popular enough, and then to accept the fact that 50% to 80% of the people who RSVP simply won’t show up. But it could be a more iterative/incremental approach to get started.