Book Clubs
Researching different blog posts on running effective book clubs in both a work and personal context for both fiction and non-fiction works. The following consolidates some of the pointers made on in "Leading a Successful Discussion," "How to Lead a Book Club Discussion," and "Recipes for running a successful technical book club at work."
On Housekeeping
- Encourage participants to join even if they had to missed, or didn't complete reading the section.
- Consider keeping an external document or Wiki on notes from the text
- Settle on a format for the discussion and intervals of meetings in the first week.
- For programming texts, consider fifteen minutes summarization of the chapter and thirty minutes of pairing over problems.
- Roughly 10 participants is the upper limit for discussion
On Reading
- When reading technical works, read in order to apply knowledge
- When reading technical works, ask what would you use it for?
- Bookmark liberally
On Moderation
- Encourage ad-conversations as it goes along
- Prepare eight to ten questions before the club meeting
- When askings questions, do not answer them yourself but rather wait for others to hop in with their answers
- Call upon quiet participants and attempt to involve everyone, avoid letting a single individual or individuals dominate the entire discussion.
- Allow for silence.
- Connect answers to the follow up questions rather than run linearlly through the prepared questions.
- Allow tangents, but reel them in if they threaten derailing the entire conversation.
- A good starting point is to ask what everyone's opinion is on the book.
External References
- Leading a Successful Discussion. BookBrowse. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
- Miller, Erin Collazo. How to Lead a Book Club Discussion. ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
- Ramen, Bob. Recipes for running a successful technical book club at work. ZenDesk. Retrieved 2021-01-14.