How do you facilitate (as in make easier) a conversation around a book, especially when you just want to enjoy yourself? Well. You use a tool that does it for you. Sort of. Spoiler: It is cards with questions on them.
The book club start
For the past few years, I have been part of a book club with my neighbours. We meet every 4-8 weeks, depending on everyone’s schedules, and discuss the book the last person chose. That person is also the host for the evening’s discussion.
The first 5-6 times, our conversation went around each person, each of us more or less reading their notes to everyone else. It was a classic round robin with the occasional interjection. It felt like something was missing, we were sharing, but we weren’t managing to go deeper.
Could I make it better?
I am a book nerd and I specialise in design thinking and facilitation (amongst other things)… only I did not want to facilitate, I wanted to read a book and participate in a discussion about it. But the lack of structure meant that each evening was a bit random. Often I left going “oh, I didn’t mention this cool thing!”. So I came up with a simple idea that I often use during the discovery phase of a project in the semi-structured interviews I facilitate: prompt cards.
During in-person interviews I often put the themes I want to discuss in the interview on cards, and put those cards in a stack on the table in front of me and the interviewee. This gives me free reign to phrase questions in ways that fit each person and the conversation we’ve had so far, while giving us all a visual anchor for what we are currently discussing. And it helps ensure I do hit all the topics.
For our book club, I put full questions on cards. A small number. Based on what we had mentioned in previous meetups. We have used them at least ten times now, and I did iterate on them, so I know they work.
The reason I am sharing them here is that several book club participants wanted photos of the card deck to share with friends who wanted to host a book club themselves. So I thought, why not make a printable PDF version that anyone could use? Maybe in the future I can even make the tiniest app to host them, too.
The cards help the conversation, help prompt you to talk about things. More things than you otherwise would.
How to use the cards
Before every meetup, the host chooses which cards they want to “play”. Not all cards need to be played.
In fact, when all were played, the conversation felt too long. So unless you want a 2-hour conversation about the book, eliminate some.
There is a first card the host must play: “why did you choose this book”, and a last card: “what is the next book”. But what is played in between and the sequence of them is up to the host for the evening!
Hope you enjoy them!
So here are the cards, available for free. I hope you have access to a printer to print them on.
I have mine on A5 cards. The font is large, because the cards are read and placed on the coffee table around which we talk, and I want them to be legible from a distance. Also, everyone in our book club needs reading glasses (except me, for now), so large fonts were an accessibility choice that aligned to the use case of a group sitting back on couches around a coffee table.
Whenever one card feels fully discussed, the host moves on to the next one, until you get to the “what’s next” final card.
May you read many wonderful books… or laugh and commiserate with wine and friends on yet another terrible read. We have thoroughly enjoyed both scenarios.
Books are even better when shared. So ping your friends and give each other a reason to meet up once every 4-8 weeks for a good discussion, probably some wine, and ideally some dinner. It is one of the highlights of my life!