Welcome to the RIP Book Club!
How does it work? I have no idea!
I’m going to read a book a month starting in December 2020 (well, December 2020 book reading started a week earlier), and I’m inviting you to read the same book. We’ll find a way to read the book together, and I’ll update this page once we find the setup that works for us 🙂
Tools I’m exploring
Bookclubz: seems to be good enough, but it doesn’t have dedicated sub-sections for each book a club is reading. Anyway, I’m giving it a try: join my Book Club here 🙂
Google Docs: maybe we’ll use Google docs for notes and collaborative exercises.
Twitter: I’ll use Twitter for updates on the Book Club. Follow me if you want to stay up to date.
Goodreads: it’s a good candidate for a Book Club discussion forum, I’m considering moving the Book Club overt here in 2021. I’ll launch a poll by the end of 2020. what I don’t like is that it’s Amazon house, and we have little control over it.
Books
Q2 2021 – The Elephant In The Brain
Q1 2021 – Designing Your Life
F.A.Q
Q) How can I join the book club?
Join us on bookclubz. There you can find all previous books we read, with the associated discussions, and the discussions about the book we’re currently reading.
Each book page (see section “Books” above) might contain extra information like shared docs, videos, material, extra resources, my notes, et cetera.
Q) What do you mean by “we read the book together”?
I don’t know yet!
I assume we all read the same book at our own pace, and maybe discuss what we learned, what resonated with us, share notes and highlights, maybe do exercises in collaborative forms.
If better ideas show up, we’ll discuss them. Feel free to propose 😉
Q) How do we decide what book to read next?
I don’t know yet. I have a lot of books piled up in my “read next” list. I’d like to propose a poll at the end of each month, with several options from my list, and maybe some options coming from book club members.
Honestly, I don’t have enough time to read all the books I currently want to read, so I’m not willing to read books I don’t care about. An exploration every N exploitation steps is ok, but not much more.
Feel free to cherry pick and join the club only when we’re reading a book you want to read 🙂
Also, feel free to propose a book you want to read.
Q) Is it Fiction or non Fiction centric?
I guess it will be mostly non-fiction centric at the beginning, but I won’t mind a good fiction book every N non-fiction. Especially Sci-Fi or Fantasy. Bonus points if it touches some philosophical/psychological/existential questions – like literally every single good book does.
Q) Why don’t we use XYZ?
Cool, feel free to propose a new tool to manage collaborative reading, I’m not aware of what’s available and I’m googling stuff for this project 🙂
Since I plan to read nonfiction books that sometimes contain “exercises”, “self reflection prompts”, and/or ideas worth exploring together, I’d like to find a tool that facilitates both sync and async collaboration. Plus it should not dominate our lives, like Slack.
A forum might be enough, with “virtual meetings” of some kind… I don’t know. Feel free to propose, and to take initiative 🙂
Q) Do we physically/Virtually meet?
Well, I don’t know. If the book club is a <10 people thing, why not?
If it grows larger and I feel like doing it, I might do a live streaming and invite someone (not everyone). I don’t know it yet.
March 2021 update: well… it’s 112 people…
Q) Does it cost me money to join the club?
LOL
Resources
- BachelorsDegreeOnline’s article “100 Tips, Tools and Resources to Take Your Book Club to the Next Level“
Why don’t you look to Goodreads? Actually is the most used social network for Booklovers with the availability to create our own forum and subforum to speak about topics that we love most.
Good idea, I’ll consider it for 2021.
I don’t like to be within the Amazon Kingdom for our book club, they’re usually too invasive with Ads and popups everywhere… but there are also pros. I’ll let you know 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion