How to Host A Book Club!

I love my book club!  I feel so fortunate to be a part of such an amazing group of women. We have met every month for the past 12 years and every year I am more excited than the next to spend time with these fabulous ladies. Over the years, people have asked me how my book club works and how we have been consistent for so many years, so I decided to share a few quick tips. This is how we do it! ( In my Montell Jordan singing voice)

Step 1: The host selects a great book!  We take turns hosting book club at our homes. This month, Debbie selected a great novel, Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile. This is a mother-daughter story of reinvention when an African-American woman inherits a sugarcane farm in Louisiana. This book is a great read and will soon be on television from executive producers Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey as an OWN series.  Checkout the book on Amazon, click here to view the book.

Step 2: Serve great food! 

We meet on Friday nights, so we come hungry for dinner after a long work day. The table setting was so beautiful and the food, OMG! It was amazing…simply delicious! From the homemade salad dressing, fresh bruschetta, amazing pasta, to the best homemade cheesecake I have ever tasted… it was over the top good!! I will share Debbie’s great recipes in my Homestyle Cooking posts coming soon!  Now, don’t worry…you don’t have to cook like this to host a book club! Most of us just pickup something from a restaurant but lately…we have been kickin’ it up a notch in the kitchen!

Step 3: Serve a refreshing drink!  A tasty lemonade, great wine and/or a signature cocktail is perfect on a Friday night. It was a White Sangria kinda night folks!

Step 4: Lead the book discussion. We usually discuss the book after dinner while we have dessert. Sometimes we use guided questions included in the book from the author and sometimes we make up our own questions. Now, there are times when we have the host or someone else who finished the book do a “book summary” because a bunch of us did not finish the book, LOL!  There is no judgement if you did not get a chance to finish the book. Our rule is…talk about what you know! On a few occasions, we have invited authors to come to book club. One year, Hill Harper came and discussed his book. Letters to a Young Brother, we were so excited!

Click here to view the book, Letters to a Young Brother.

Step 5: Have a lot of fun!  We laugh and just have fun discussing hot topics, or even playing a quick round of Black Card Revoked, LOL!  This is a fun game! Click here to view the game.

I think the key to our success as a book club is keeping our group small, just a few friends and family.  We have shared happy times and difficult times but, we stick to our meeting schedule and go all out for each other.  I think sisterhood and friendship are so important.  Traveling through life’s bumpy road is so much better when you have road dogs!  I hope this blog post inspires you to start a book club, enhance the one you are already in or just get together with your girlfriends.

This blog post is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend, Jackie. She was one of the founders of our book club and a phenomenal woman. 

Stay busy being fabulous,

-Kery B.