Book club questions that work when nobody has finished

Why the usual question lists fail

Publisher question lists are written for a situation that rarely exists at the table: everyone has finished, everyone remembers the same scenes, and nobody minds that the third question already names the ending.

In reality someone is still in the middle of the agreed section. A question that reaches further than that section takes the book away from that person. They can still read on, but they can no longer discover.

Three properties make a question usable in a book club, whatever the book:

• It can be answered without revealing what happens.
• It has no correct answer, otherwise the conversation becomes a test.
• It works for someone who has only just started the section.

A question only finishers can answer is not a discussion question. It is a quiz.

Book club, reading group, book group: does the wording change the questions?

People search for the same thing under several names, and the names carry slightly different habits. Knowing which one a group follows saves an argument later, because the disagreement is usually about the format and not about the book.

The four common names, and what tends to differ underneath them:

• Book club: the broadest word. Usually a fixed group, a agreed section, and a meeting that is as much social as literary.
• Reading group: often used where the reading is the point and the meeting is shorter. Questions tend to stay closer to the text.
• Book group: interchangeable with book club in most of Britain. The questions are the same.
• Literature circle: comes from classrooms, where each member holds a named role. Useful borrowing for a group that keeps falling silent.

The questions below work under all four names. The only thing that really changes between them is how strictly the group sticks to the agreed section, and that is worth settling out loud before the first meeting.

The question that opens a meeting

The opening decides whether everyone speaks or two people do. An opening question should be answerable without preparation, and a short answer has to be allowed.

These carry an opening and need no preparation:

• Where did you last stop reading because you were tired, and where because you needed to think?
• If you put the book down right now and someone asks what it is like, what do you say in one sentence?
• Has your picture of any character changed since the last meeting, and what changed it?
• Was there a passage you read twice?
• Are you reading this faster or slower than usual, and why?

The last one looks the least interesting and is often the most useful. Saying you are reading slowly says something about the book, and it gives everyone else permission to be slow too.

Questions about the agreed section

This is the main part. These questions assume everyone has read the agreed section, and they deliberately do not reach beyond it. Whoever asks names the section out loud first.

Questions that stay inside the section and still go deep:

• Which character would you describe differently now than before this section?
• Which decision by a character would you not have made, and what would have stopped you?
• Is anything told here that the plot does not need? Why is it there, then?
• Where did the book make you like something you would normally reject?
• What is left out of this section, and did you notice while reading or only now?
• If you had to read one page of this section aloud, which would it be?

The one about omission is the hardest and pays best. What a book leaves out is rarely noticed while reading and almost always noticed in conversation, once somebody asks.

Name the section with the question. Otherwise nobody knows how far they may answer.

When the conversation stalls

Silence in a book club is usually not boredom. It is uncertainty about how much may be said. The questions that help then turn away from the book and towards the reading.

These move a stuck conversation again:

• Where do you read this book, and does the place suit it?
• Does it remind you of something else you have read?
• Would you give it to someone, and who would you not give it to?
• If you had wanted to abandon it, where would that have been?
• What would have to happen in the next section to disappoint you?

The last one is risky and therefore good: it invites someone to voice an expectation without revealing anything. What a reader fears says more about how they read than any summary.

Questions to avoid

Four questions appear in nearly every list and cost more than they give:

• "What did you think of the ending?" It excludes everyone who is not there yet, and it does so in the first clause.
• "What was the author trying to say?" It implies a correct answer and turns the conversation into an interpretation test.
• "Did you like it?" One word answers it, and then the room is quiet.
• "Who has finished?" It sorts the group into fast and slow, and the slow half says less afterwards.

The last one looks like housekeeping and is a judgement. Admitting you are behind feels like apologising. A group where that happens does not lose its slower readers. It loses what they would have said.

Any question about the ending is a question aimed at half the group.

When the group is at different places in the book

This is the normal case, and it is not a problem as long as the group says so. Two habits are enough: agree the section before the meeting, and if you are further ahead, say nothing about what comes after it.

Agree the section by chapters and never by pages. Paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook count the same story differently, so a page number means something different to every person at the table.

At Wir Buchverliebten the software handles this: notes are delivered by reading position rather than by time. What someone writes about a chapter stays hidden until you reach that chapter yourself. The question of how far you may answer no longer comes up, because it has already been answered.