Cailin Riley Books

When was the last time you were invited to or part of a book club?

If you’ve been lucky, like me, you might have dilly-dallied through a few book clubs in your time. Other than career-related bookclubs where you read something for professional development, I’ve only been a part of two bookclubs in like, the last decade.

One had about 4 people in it and we met via Zoom a few times over the summer before folks started getting busy and things just fizzled out. I’m currently in a very casual book club with a good friend of mine, but it’s just me and her. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to keep reading new releases and stay in touch, but I miss the days when big book clubs were a thing.

If there’s one thing I miss about my college English major days, it’s the required reading for class that essentially made everyone part of the same bookclub. Nowadays, I feel like options to join a bookclub are pretty far and few between.

For example, our local public library does offer a mystery genre book club but they only meet once a month and even then, the discussion is fairly limited. In the past, I’ve seen other places hold “silent book clubs,” which involve people bringing whatever book they like and reading together in silence.

That’s nice, but I really wish our community had a group that offered a robust book club that reads popular new releases and meets at least once every one to two weeks.

I have of course, had the crazy thought that maybe I could start something like that. But, to be honest with you, I have no idea where I would even start and I’m nervous that it wouldn’t get any traction.

What do you think? Are you part of a book club and how did yours get started?