Questions to Ask at a Book Club
Twenty discussion questions for a book club, ordered from easy openers to the arguments worth having, with notes on facilitating a group where not everyone finished the book.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Did everyone finish it, and if you stopped, where?
Why ask it
Groups tend to pretend everyone finished, and the discussion gets worse for it. The page where someone gave up is real evidence, and three people abandoning it in the same chapter is often the most interesting fact of the evening.
Was there an early page where you knew whether you'd get along with this book?
Why ask it
Sends people to a specific passage instead of a general verdict, and the passages rarely match. Expect first-line style, a voice someone found grating, or the moment the premise became clear.
What was your reaction when you closed it?
Why ask it
Deliberately about the minute after finishing rather than the considered opinion, which is why it gets honest answers: relief, irritation, wanting to start again. It also separates people who admired the book from people who enjoyed it.
Which character would you refuse to have dinner with?
Why ask it
Far more productive than asking who you related to, because dislike is specific and people defend it in detail. It also draws out how much of a reader's judgment is about behavior rather than writing.
Who did you find yourself defending, and against whom in the book?
Why ask it
Surfaces the reader's allegiances and where the author steered them. When one person defends the character everyone else dismissed, that is usually the discussion worth following for the next twenty minutes.
Was there a point you had to go back and reread?
Why ask it
Confusion is worth discussing rather than concealing. It also distinguishes deliberate withholding by the author from a passage that simply does not work, and the group can usually tell which it was.
What did the author choose not to show us?
Why ask it
Turns attention to structure without requiring literary vocabulary: an offstage death, a marriage summarized in a sentence, years skipped between parts. The omissions are usually where the book's intentions are clearest.
Whose book would this be if someone else in it were telling the story?
Why ask it
Reliably reframes the whole discussion, because a sympathetic narrator often turns out to be the least reliable person in the room. Works on memoir and narrative nonfiction as well as novels.
Where did you disagree with a decision a character made, and would you really have done otherwise?
Why ask it
The second half is what stops this being easy. People are quick to condemn a choice and slower to place themselves in the same constraints, and watching that shift is more interesting than the initial judgment.
Which sentence or passage did you mark?
Why ask it
Asking people to read a few lines aloud changes the temperature of a meeting, and it grounds the discussion in the prose rather than the plot. When nobody marked anything, that is worth noting too.
Did the setting matter, or could this have happened anywhere?
Why ask it
A quick test of how much research or invention is doing real work. If the answer is that the place is interchangeable, ask whether that is a weakness or simply not what the book is interested in.
What is this book about, as distinct from what happens in it?
Why ask it
The question that separates plot summary from reading, and it produces genuine disagreement in almost every group. Push for one sentence, since the vaguer answers usually mean someone is describing the blurb.
Where did it lose you, or feel longer than it needed to be?
Why ask it
Gives permission to criticize a book that arrived with prizes attached, which some groups otherwise never do. The sagging middle is frequently the same fifty pages for everyone, which tells you something about the structure.
Did the ending earn itself?
Why ask it
Better than asking whether you liked the ending, because it asks about setup and payoff rather than taste. Expect argument about coincidence, about characters behaving out of character to reach a conclusion, and about ambiguity.
Based on this book alone, what do you think the author believes?
Why ask it
Requires evidence from the page and blocks answers copied from interviews. Where the group disagrees strongly, the interesting question is whether the book is genuinely ambivalent or simply unclear.
Did any of this change your mind, or only confirm what you already thought?
Why ask it
The honest answer is usually confirmation, and admitting it makes for a better conversation than pretending otherwise. It matters most with nonfiction, where agreement is easily mistaken for having been persuaded.
For anyone rereading it: what did you notice this time?
Why ask it
Rereaders see structure and foreshadowing that first-time readers cannot, so this hands the group something new instead of a repeat verdict. It also lets someone who has read it three times contribute without spoiling the rest.
Who would you give this to, and who would you keep it from?
Why ask it
The second half sharpens it considerably. Deciding who should not read this book forces people to say what is actually difficult in it, whether that is violence, grief, or simply four hundred pages of nothing happening.
If you got one question with the author, what would you ask?
Why ask it
The questions people choose reveal what the book failed to resolve for them. Craft questions, why this structure, why this ending, tend to come from readers who admired it; motive questions come from readers who did not.
Where does this sit against the last few we've read, and what should that tell us about the next pick?
Why ask it
Closes the meeting with a decision rather than a summary. Groups that ask this notice their own patterns, such as always choosing recent literary fiction, and it makes the next selection less accidental.
Facilitating the meeting
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Running a discussion that goes somewhere
Open with a round nobody can fail
Ask everyone in turn for a one-sentence reaction before the free discussion starts. It gets every voice into the room early, which is the single most reliable way to stop two people running the evening.
Let the person who did not finish stay in
They usually ask the best structural questions, and excluding them guarantees they stop coming. Agree how spoilers will be handled instead of pretending the situation away.
Follow disagreement rather than the question list
When two people read a character differently, drop the next prepared question and stay there. Working through a list on schedule is how meetings end up feeling like a school seminar.
Keep author interviews for the end
Reading what the author said about their intentions early tends to close off interpretation. Let the group argue first, then bring in the outside material if anyone has it.
Adapting for nonfiction and memoir
- Replace character questions with questions about the people the author chose to quote and the ones they left out.
- Ask what the argument actually is, and whether the evidence in the book would convince a skeptical reader.
- For memoir, ask who else in the story would dispute this account, and how the writer handles being the narrator of their own case.
- For history and science, ask what has changed since publication, and check the date rather than assuming currency.
- Ask whether anyone looked something up while reading, and what they found. That is often the most interesting five minutes.
What breaks a book club
One person picking every month
The group's reading narrows without anyone deciding it should. Rotate the choice, and let the person choosing explain why they picked it rather than defending it afterwards.
Treating criticism as bad manners
If the group cannot say a well-reviewed book bored them, the discussion becomes a polite summary. Ask directly where it failed for people, early enough that the answer does not feel rude.
Books too long for the interval
Most people read a couple of hours a week. A six-hundred-page pick with three weeks' notice guarantees half the group arrives unfinished and quiet.
Letting the social half eat the discussion
Set a rough time for talking about the book, and hold it. Groups that leave it open often find they have spent two hours on everything except what they read.