{"id":614,"date":"2019-07-21T12:50:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T16:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/?p=614"},"modified":"2019-07-21T19:31:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T23:31:08","slug":"head-to-head-book-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/head-to-head-book-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Head-to-Head Book Club"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;ve never participated in a traditional book club. However, my wife has and this is what they seem to be from my third party perspective:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Someone picks a book that inevitably some people don&#8217;t want to read<\/li><li>Everyone reads the book before the meeting date. Some people will finish well before the deadline and move on to other books and others will finish close to the due date (if they finish at all)<\/li><li>At the meeting, conversation and wine flow<\/li><li>The book might get talked about. Unless the readers took notes (who wants to do that while reading for enjoyment?), participants will be discussing the particulars of a book well after the freshness date<\/li><li>Some attendees don&#8217;t talk because they didn&#8217;t read the book at all or were not interested enough to care<\/li><li>Many introverts won&#8217;t join a club in the first place because, well, people<\/li><li>Male participants are in (very) short supply. I&#8217;m not sure if this is by design (I wouldn&#8217;t blame the ladies if it was!) or men don&#8217;t feel like it&#8217;s a manly thing to do<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I think there&#8217;s a lot of room for improvement here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fundamentally, I feel like <strong>the process doesn&#8217;t properly honor the book<\/strong>. Luckily, there&#8217;s a solution I&#8217;d like to present to you that is both enjoyable for the readers and gives a thoughtful treatment of the book itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I call it the Head-to-Head Book Club or simply H2H.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bet you can tell from the name that this is the smallest book club you&#8217;ve ever seen. &#8220;Head-to-head&#8221; here is not about two opponents but rather the transfer of information between two people. The tiny scale of this &#8220;club&#8221; provides considerable benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s how it works:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>You and your H2H partner mutually decide what to read<\/li><li>You both read a set number of chapters per day<\/li><li>You discuss what you read the previous day (questions, likes\/dislikes, theories, etc.)<\/li><li>Some days there will be considerable discussion and some days there will be none. No worries!<\/li><li>Continue the reading\/discussing intervals until done <\/li><li>When done, discuss the book from an overall perspective<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As you can see, this personal book club eliminates the group dynamics. (I&#8217;m not saying groups are bad. Any reason to party is a good one!) As a result, it&#8217;s a very introvert-friendly way to have a book club experience. Heck, you don&#8217;t even have to meet in person for discussions!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It also solves the &#8220;freshness&#8221; problem since the book is discussed in near real time as you go. This is key for me because it&#8217;s so much fun. Since both of you are at the same spot in the book you can discuss anything you&#8217;ve read so far and try to come up with whodunnit or make predictions about what will happen. It&#8217;s also great when your theories become reality in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The H2H book club is very lightweight. With two people it&#8217;s easier to pick a mutually desirable book and reading patterns can be changed on the fly if something comes up with schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The H2H book club approach is a simple way of enjoying a book with a friend. You can be as flexible as necessary and make it your own. When it&#8217;s time to pick a new book and the two of you can&#8217;t agree at the moment, simply take a break from H2H and revisit later. Time has a way of presenting books that would be mutually enjoyable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no wrong way to run a H2H book club. Whatever you choose to do is the right way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beyond the basics, consider these premium add-ons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>If you&#8217;re a voracious reader you can have separate H2H sessions going with multiple people and books. This might be necessary because you want to do more reading but you have to stop on an H2H session so that you don&#8217;t get too far ahead of your partner. (For me, I don&#8217;t have multiple H2H sessions but I usually have a non-fiction book handy for extracurricular reading.)<\/li><li>Imagine the value-add if you and your partner are both writers. Not only can you discuss the book in a readerly way but you can also discuss writing aspects. Best of all, you are doing that while the things are fresh in your mind and it&#8217;s easy to go back a few pages to reread things. This would also be great for a more experienced writer to point out craft aspects to a less experienced writer. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While I&#8217;ve codified the H2H Book Club, I must give credit to my colleague who suggested that it might be fun to simultaneously read a book. She was right. Thanks, Kristen!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you think? If you are in a traditional book club do you feel like the book gets proper treatment? Is the H2H book club idea intriguing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never participated in a traditional book club. However, my wife has and this is what they seem to be from my third party perspective: Someone picks a book that inevitably some people don&#8217;t want to read Everyone reads the book before the meeting date. Some people will finish well before the deadline and move&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/head-to-head-book-club\/\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Head-to-Head Book Club<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hivewordhq.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}