A place for librarians to share articles, advice, humor, and experiences.
Book Clubs
Does your library have a book club? Did your library used to run a book club and then stop?
My local library has one night a month where people can get together to just talk about what they've been reading lately. It isn't a formal book club, but it is a great concept. All the bookish fun, none of the required reading.




My library has two book clubs - we have the Guy's Book Club, run by Andy, and it is for guys only. It has been a huge success and after 5 years they get at least 20 guys to each meeting. We had several comments this past year about wanting a "regular" book club, so we started one, but it only gets 3-5 people each time. Several of the other libraries in our system of clubs that meet regularly, some for children too. The hardest nuts to crack are the teens - they just have too much assigned reading. :(
Does the Guy's Book Club tend to read anything different than what a regular book club would read?
For the teens, are you getting them in for other programs? If you already have them in and get them talking about their assigned reading and what they do or don't like about it maybe you could plant the seed of other books. Start more of a passive book club with displays of "Reading X? Try this if you're enjoying...fill in highlights of the story." If you get your, say, Anime Club, trading book ideas you'd at least have a crack in the shell.
Yes, Andy tries to pick titles that would appeal more to guys, so it is a lot heavier on non-fiction. (though I did laugh when Andy asked the guys to pick some books and they picked 'Orphan Train' LOLOL my theory is that their wives read it and they wanted to read it now).
Yeah, my branch doesn't have many teens that hang out, some of our other branches do and they have had more success with those kinds of programs. Though never book clubs, more just casual teen hang out programs.