[RaggedyAnn]

I know this is the Delta Sigma Theta board, but I hope you don't mind me sharing in the discussion. We reinvented our book club, after it fizzled the first year, and we've been quite successful this time around.

What is making our book club successful this time around is:
We picked all the books for the year. We're on the 10th book now. How we did it is we went for a GNO and we all brought 2-3 suggestions. Everyone got to choose one book and then everyone voted on the rest.
We have a set day and meeting time. For example, the third Thursday of every month at such and such time. We can then schedule around it. If we get to a month and figure out it doesn't work for us, we must reschedule within a week, or we go to the next book. (this happened one month) That's what had made the first run fizzle, so that's why we made this rule. (#2)
#1 is you must read the book, or make a real effort to be able to join the discussion.
#3 is the book has to be less than 500 pages, or it gets divided into 2 months.

For activities and discussions, we read the book and pick a theme for food. We've done vegan, German, Chinese, etc. If we can pick a location, like a boat to host that goes along with the theme we do that. We've also scheduled a couple of field trips to go along with books we've read, but not during that day. We'll play a game of Scrabble or Bananagrams if the meeting runs quick.

Our usual schedule is 2.5-3 hours, where we eat and talk (gossip) for about an hour, talk about the book for an hour or so and then just chat some more and then the mamas all go pick up their kids from school. When we've done night meetings, we usually go out somewhere.

I hope you're able to get it up and running again! Oh, and we have a private Facebook group, so we post there all the time with inside jokes and bits of info all the time, which keeps us together. We also use the Invites option to send out a reminder of when we are meeting.