If you’re anything like me, you collect books but rarely have time to read them. I always have the best of intentions, but with a heavy teaching load and a need to read certain things for my research of book writing, lots of books I want to read collect dust as I tend to read lighter novels in my free time rather than books I feel connect to my professional life.
On-campus book clubs have helped me read and reflect on some of these books while also introducing me to some new ones I might not have sought out of my own. Consider using some time this summer to reach out to others in your campus committee about starting a community reading group! To give you some inspiration for different ways they can work, here are 3 examples from my own campus life.
Safe Zone Book Club
We have an active Safe Zone program on campus with a volunteer committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students (and I’ve long been involved). We do trainings across campus as well as outreach and awareness events. One of our most successful programs is our faculty/staff book club. The program buys 12-15 copies of a given book each semester. A few fac/staff members of the Safe Zone Committee volunteer to be facilitators and get a copy of the book. The other copies are given out first-come-first-served to people who sign up to participate in that semester’s book club.
This book club started before the pandemic, and we used to two meetings per book about 2 weeks apart. Depending on the size of the group that semester, we may have a full group discussion or break into a few smaller discussion groups. During the pandemic, we met via Zoom and moved to a single meeting per book – a format we kept once we returned to face-to-face meetings.
We’ve read a lot of memoirs in this group to really hear the stories of people with different identities and experiences. We’ve also had some novels, essay collections, and higher-ed critiques in there as well. This group has led me to read books I never would have otherwise picked up, and it’s really helped me think more about less frequently discussed identities such as those on the Ace and Aro spectrums as well as intersex identities.
“No Time To Read” Pedagogy Book Club
A second book club I’ve been part of over the past few years is run by our teaching center. It’s advertised as the “no time to read” book club as they want you to attend and be part of discussions regardless of whether you’ve read all of, some of, or none of the book being discussed. To compensate for that, the facilitator presents a 5ish minute overview of key ideas from the section of the book under discussion and frames some discussion questions/topics for the group. Given the institutional support, all participants who sign up be a certain date receive the book for free.
We generally meet 3 times per semester, and we’ve both had years where we’ve had a new book each semester as well as ones where we’ve had a single book framing activities and workshops throughout the academic year. Both have been successful.
This style of book club takes more planning as someone needs to be prepared to pull out key ideas and summarize them for everyone. Because of this, it really does work best with shorter chunks of reading rather than a full book.
This book club has led to me reading books I wouldn’t have made time for otherwise, but it’s also provided a wonderful opportunity to give and get support from colleagues as well as get to know faculty from across campus whom I might not otherwise interact with regularly. We’ve generally met via zoom, but the teaching center is planning to have us be fully in-person for 2024-25, so we’ll see how that change impacts things. That said, this group showed me how a book group can be very successful online, so don’t be afraid to join or start one that meets via zoom.
Racial Justice Book Club
Last but not least is the racial justice book club. Unlike the others I’ve discussed above, this one isn’t facilitated by an institutionalized entity on campus. Rather, it was started as a result of discussions among faculty and staff who wanted to share their goals for racial justice with others. Members of this group select and read a book together that they each access on their own (through purchase, library access, or borrowing from friends). The goal is to learn from the book and each other while each working on our own to gain greater awareness of where we each need to work to be more anti-racists in our lives in general as well as in our interactions on campus.
Because there isn’t institutional support, this one ahs met less consistently, generally over zoom, and often has a few subgroups based on schedule availability. I’ve really enjoyed the books I’ve read as part of this group as well as the discussions surrounding them, but I think it’s a great example of why some institutionalized structural supports can help keep this going. Groups often work better when there’s a clear person in charge who is in that role by virtue of the job. By all means, try a self-organized group, but know that you need at least one person who’ll take on the organizer role (at least for one book) to really make things work.
In the end, there’s no right or wrong way to do a book club, but I’ve found that it’s a great way to get to know colleagues. I also really like the book clubs where I interact with staff as well as other faculty as they often bring a very different perspective on campus life to the table than I do, so I get to learn from them on multiple levels.
Have you been part of any book clubs? What do you find does and doesn’t work in them?