book club

A book discussion club is a group of people who meet to discuss a book or books that they have read and express their opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. It is more often called simply a book club, a term that is also used to describe a book sales club, which can cause confusion. Other frequently used terms to describe a book discussion club include reading group, book group, and book discussion group. Book discussion clubs may meet in private homes, libraries, bookstores, online forums, pubs, and in cafés or restaurants over meals or drinks. A practice also associated with book discussion, common reading program or common read, involves institutions encouraging their members to discuss select books in group settings; common reading programs are largely associated with educational institutions encouraging their students to hold book discussion meetings. History Though women had formed Bible study groups since the 1600s, it wasn't until the late 1700s that secular reading circles emerged in both America and Europe. Reading circles were not limited to particular races or classes, with one of the first reading groups for Black women being formed in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1827. Throughout the 1800s, women’s reading circles expanded, with some becoming outspoken on social issues such as abolition—foreshadowing the club movement of the end of that century. Well into the 1900s, book clubs continued to serve as both an intellectual outlet and a radical political tool. In the first half of the 20th century, women continued to be barred from many top universities. This time period was the heyday of the Book of the Month Club and the Great Books movement, both of which encouraged average Americans to take on hefty literary novels.