Last month one of my book clubs spent forty minutes on the question of whether the main character would have made a good flatmate. It was a lovely evening and we said almost nothing about the book. I came home and thought: next time I am bringing questions. Years ago I wrote nine tips for a successful book club, and tip number five was exactly this, have some questions ready. I never wrote them down. So here they are, fifty of them, sorted by what you might want to talk about. They work for a novel, a memoir or a biography.
Questions to open the evening
- What did you expect from this book before you started, and did it deliver?
- Where were you when you read most of it?
- Did you read it in one go or in small portions?
- Which page or scene made you decide to keep going?
- Was there a point where you nearly gave up?
- If you had to describe the book in one sentence to a friend, what would you say?
- Did the cover or the title promise something the book did not keep?
- Who would you give this book to, and who would you keep it from?
- What is the first word that comes to mind now that you have finished?
- Did you look anything up while reading?
Questions about the people in the book
- Which character did you understand best, and which one not at all?
- Who would you have liked more of?
- Did anyone change over the course of the book, or did only your view of them change?
- Was there a character you disliked at first and warmed to later?
- Which decision in the book would you have made differently?
- Is the narrator telling you the whole truth?
- Who holds the power in this story, and does that shift?
- Would you have been friends with the main character?
- Did any of the relationships feel familiar from your own life?
- If one character could read this book, how would they react to the way they are shown?
I asked question sixteen when we read James by Percival Everett, and it kept us busy for the rest of the night.
Questions about how it is written
- How would you describe the voice of the book: warm, cold, funny, distant?
- Did the length feel right?
- Was there a sentence you wanted to write down?
- How did the book handle time: did it jump, slow down, go in circles?
- Did the structure help the story or get in its way?
- Would the book work told from another point of view?
- Was anything left out on purpose, and did that work?
- How did the first page and the last page talk to each other?
- Did the book trust you as a reader, or did it explain too much?
- Is this a book you read for the plot or for the sentences?
Question thirty is the one that split my other club down the middle over Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Half of us did not miss a plot at all.
Questions about the world outside the book
- What does the book say about the time it was written in?
- Would it be a different book if it were set where you live?
- Did it change your mind about anything, even slightly?
- Which part of the book felt most true, and which least?
- Did it remind you of another book, a film or a conversation?
- What would you want to ask the author?
- Did you learn something you did not expect to learn?
- Is there a theme the author never names but that is clearly there?
- Who is this book really for?
- Would you have read it if nobody had chosen it for you?
Questions for the end of the evening
- What will you remember about this book in a year?
- Would you read something else by the same author?
- Did the discussion tonight change how you feel about the book?
- What did someone else say tonight that surprised you?
- If the book had one more chapter, what would be in it?
- What should the next book be, given how this one went?
- Did the ending feel earned?
- Who deserved a better ending?
- Is this a book to keep, to lend or to give away?
- On a scale from “I was polite about it” to “I have already bought a copy for someone”, where are you?
You do not need all fifty. I take five or six, write them on the back of an old bookmark and let the others pick. Oddly, the questions I think are weakest often open the best conversations. Which questions get your book club talking?
