I've been leading my book club wrong for two years and just figured it out

Angela Jackson · 2026-04-02T00:50:05.79403+00:00

My group in Austin has been meeting since 2022, and I always picked the next book right after we finished discussing the old one. I thought I was being helpful. Last month, my friend Sarah said, 'I feel like I'm just voting on a list I didn't help make.' That hit me. I realized I was basically running a book dictatorship, not a club. So for our next pick, I sent out a Google Form a week early with 5 options from different genres. The chat blew up with people adding their own suggestions before the vote. It was way more fun. Has anyone else had a lightbulb moment about how they run their group's book picks?

paul1175mo ago

Wait, does the rotating host thing really fix the problem though? That just swaps out one person's pick for another single pick each month. You still end up with a book most people didn't choose. The form with options is a better start, but letting people add to the list first is the real key.

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spencerl324mo ago

My first book pick was a 900 page Russian novel, nobody finished it including me.

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skyler_white955mo ago

My friend's club in Portland uses a rotating host system where each person picks the month's book.

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