Questions to Ask in a Book Club
Discussion questions for a book group that has already read the book, arranged so the easy ones open the evening and the harder ones arrive once people are talking. Works for fiction and non-fiction.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What was your first reaction to the book, and did it change as you kept reading?
Why ask it
An easier opener than asking whether people liked it, because it lets someone admit they were bored for eighty pages and then won over, which is usually the more interesting story.
Which character did you find yourself siding with?
Why ask it
Siding with is more revealing than relating to. Groups often split over the same character, and the split usually runs along lines of age or circumstance rather than taste.
Which passage did you mark, or go back and read again?
Why ask it
Turns an abstract discussion into a reading. Ask people to read it out, and expect two members to have marked the same page for opposite reasons.
Was there a point where you nearly put it down?
Why ask it
Gives permission to the people who struggled, who otherwise stay quiet all evening. The place where readers stall is often exactly where the author was taking the biggest risk.
Did the writing carry you along, or did you notice it working?
Why ask it
Separates style from story without demanding literary vocabulary. Readers who noticed the prose will point to specific tics, and readers who did not will tell you the plot pulled hard.
Whose point of view is missing from this book?
Why ask it
The best single question for a flat discussion. Naming the absent character, the servant, the first wife, the people the study surveyed but never quoted, reveals what the book takes for granted.
What did the author assume the reader already believed?
Why ask it
Surfaces the book's politics without starting a political argument, since the group is describing the author's assumptions rather than defending their own.
How did the setting and the period limit what these people could do?
Why ask it
Stops the common complaint that a character should simply have left. Grounding the discussion in law, money, and travel of the time changes how the group judges them.
What did you learn that you did not know before?
Why ask it
Obvious for non-fiction and often surprising for novels. It also flushes out the member who fact-checked something and found it wrong, which is worth the detour.
Which images or objects kept coming back, and did they earn their place?
Why ask it
Asking whether they earned it invites a verdict rather than a symbol hunt, so the group can say a motif was heavy-handed instead of dutifully decoding it.
How did the ending land for you?
Why ask it
Endings divide a group more reliably than anything else. Push for what people expected instead, since the imagined alternative ending says more than the objection does.
What did you make of the pacing?
Why ask it
Concrete enough that anyone can answer, and it often exposes an audiobook and print divide, since the same slow chapter can pass quite differently in each format.
Did the way it was structured help you or get in your way?
Why ask it
Dual timelines, footnotes, and shifting narrators tend to be either the reason someone loved the book or the reason they gave up, and the group rarely agrees.
Did this book change any of your opinions, or harden them?
Why ask it
Offering hardened as an option gets more honest answers, since most readers finish a book more convinced of what they already thought.
What would you cut?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than what would you change, and it produces sharp criticism fast: a subplot, a hundred pages of backstory, an epilogue that explained too much.
What did the book leave unanswered?
Why ask it
Distinguishes a deliberate silence from a loose end the author forgot about, and the group's disagreement about which is which is the discussion.
Would you have recognized this author from anything else you have read?
Why ask it
Good for groups that have read the writer before, and it lets people compare a late book with an early one instead of judging it alone.
What would you ask the author if they walked in now?
Why ask it
Late in the evening this collects the questions people were too polite to raise as criticism, and it usually surfaces the group's real doubts about the book.
How does it compare with the last book we read together?
Why ask it
Builds a shared history for the group and reveals whether your picks are drifting into a rut of one country, one decade, or one register.
What would you rate it out of ten, and what would earn it another point?
Why ask it
A closing round that gives every member a turn, including the quiet ones. The second half is what matters, since the fix people name shows what they wanted from the book.
Running the discussion
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Shape of an evening
- 1Give the first fifteen minutes to food and catching up. Trying to start on the book while people are still arriving never works.
- 2Open with the reaction question and go around the circle once so everybody has spoken early. People who have not spoken in the first twenty minutes often stay silent all evening.
- 3Spend the middle hour on three or four questions only. Six questions in an hour turns the evening into a quiz.
- 4Close with the rating round, then agree the next book and who is hosting before anyone stands up.
Common problems
Someone did not finish it
Ask them where they stopped and why, then treat it as data about the book. Warn the group before spoilers rather than making the person leave the conversation.
One person is answering everything
Switch to a question that goes around the circle in order, or ask the group to name a passage rather than an opinion. Directing a question to a specific person by name is fair once the pattern is set.
The book was disliked by everyone
A short evening is better than a forced one. Ask what the author was attempting, why it was published to praise, and what a reader who loved it might be seeing, then move to choosing the next book.
It has drifted into general chat
Reading a marked passage aloud pulls a group back to the text faster than asking people to focus. Keep two passages in reserve for this.
Choosing books that discuss well
- Books with a divisive character or an ambiguous ending generate more conversation than books that are simply good.
- Length matters more than difficulty. A five hundred page novel will cut your attendance in half no matter how readable it is.
- Rotate who picks, and let the person who picked speak last so the group is not reacting to their host.
- Avoid books that only work with the twist intact if half the group is likely to have read a review of it.