Advise, please!

Most of you are very aware of how bookish I am, but I've never been a part of a book club. (My education has been sorely lacking.) Now, on the recommendation of a co-worker and then thinking about it over the weekend, I sent an e-mail to all my co-workers here at the library, announcing my intention to form a book club. Which, for the time being (until someone else officially or unofficially takes over), puts me in charge. It's just going to be in the lunch room of our library, and it'll be during a lunch hour (hours are flexible, so we all have the option of taking lunch -- being off the clock -- when we want to).

I've never even been to a book club meeting before. I have no idea what on earth I'm supposed to do! If you've been a member of a book club, or in charge of one, please let me know what your experiences have been like. (And any pitfalls that I might be able to avoid!) I'm just not sure how to conduct the meeting; do you launch right into the discussion, or are there normally preliminaries to go through first?

We're starting out with Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. Several of us have already read and enjoyed it, so I think it'll be a good one to begin with. I found a Reader Guide that had some book discussion questions, so I have an idea of what questions to ask. At least that part of it is on its way to being taken care of!

read_hp community

In the unlikely event you haven't yet heard about it, there's a community that's been established with the purpose of everyone re-reading all six Severus Snape books Harry Potter books before Deathly Hallows comes out on 21st July: read_hp. They have a reading schedule here; we start on Philosopher's Stone on Monday.

Just wanted to give you all a heads-up. There will also be a discussion of the chapters read each day.