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Hi Nope - dont know the people well at all - I'm setting it up at work (large building of 300+ people!) - have no idea what the response will be like (fingers crossed!!).
IN fact in the opening advert for it - do you think it would be acceptable to list a few contenders for the first book - and get people to choose? Or would this be off putting to some peopl?
I've recently been through this. If you list a few contenders, you may colour people's perceptions of what the book group will be like. Have you made that decision - classic v contemporary, novels v biographies etc etc - or is that something for the group to decide?
My experience with book groups is that collective attempts to pick a book to read are time-consuming and often end in tears if the assertive members steamroller their choices through and the meeker feel they've been shouted down. What works best for us is that each member nominates a book in turn.
My suggestion would be use the first meeting to gauge how many people are interested and what they're interested in. In the advert, suggest a book which people could aim to read before the meeting, just in case the introductions etc don't fill all the time.
If you go for something really random like "a colour themed book" or similar for the first group, people can read a book they feel comfortable with, and you can gauge the kind of genres etc are popular within the group.
We aim for a balance (sort of) between classics and contemporary and heavier and lighter reads, although we don't do chick lit or airport novels.
What works for us is meeting monthly - make it less frequent and the group may not gel - and (for the group at work) using the scheduler to make sure meetings are in everyone's calendar.
Go for fairly short books. People generally seem happy to read something out of their usual range, but not if it means they can read nothing else for a month!
Go for books which are easily available from libraries and book shops - not everyone is keen on Amazon.
Don't get too obscure unless that is the group's conscious decision. Even when it's one's turn to choose the book, one has (I think) to be a little generous/kind/amenable - even if you have been dying to read a 900-page trilogy recently translated from the Albanian and available only by mail order from Tirana, it's probably a kindness to your fellow members not to make it your book group choice!
Good for you for setting this up. One word of advice - don't start off with anything too highbrow - my book group kicked off with Madame Bovary and that nearly finished us off (think we were all desperate to prove that our brains were still functioning). Off the top of my head, how about To Kill a Mocking Bird; Case Histories (which is/was Mumsnet book group choice); Wife in the North (a v easy one); Atonement - or any of those books that everyone talks about, but which you may not actually have had time to read.
Also .... just thought of this .... think about how 'gendered' the books you select are. As this is a workplace group, I imagine you'll have men and women coming along. We choose The Red Tent for one meeting and it probably wasn't a coincidence that none of the men turned up!
