Meet the ECT Book Club: And Then Tell us About Your Book Club

Book clubs are a chance to meet up with like-minded bibliophiles for some good old-fashioned book banter. They are a fantastic opportunity to make new friends and connect with other book-lovers. Many of our Better Reading community members already have their book clubs, and we love hearing about them. In fact, we plan to regularly feature book clubs from around Australia on our site. So if you’re a member of a book club, take a pic next meeting, and send that to us with some details of why your book club is so great.

Today’s featured book club is the ECT Book Club, which stands for East Coast of Tasmania. The ECT book club has 44 members with usually 8 to 10 members who attend regularly each month. The ECT Book Club won the Better Reading After the End hamper competition, so sent us a photo of their fabulous evening of snacks, wine and discussing Clare Mackintosh’s novel. Some of the reads they’ve got coming up are Tears for Tarshiha by Olfat Mahmoud, The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena, The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein and the mammoth Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

We loved hearing about the ECT Book Club. Now tell us about yours.

If you don’t belong to a book club yet, here are some ways you can find a like-minded club.

Join an already established book club

Once you’ve decided to join a book club, finding one won’t be too difficult. Ask around, your friends, your local library or local book store. A search of the website meetup shows hundreds of book clubs you can join, catering to every taste. From romance book clubs, to business book clubs, to the Jane Austen book club and one dedicated to Marcel Proust, there’s something for everyone. There are even book clubs for adults that read YA or clubs you can join with your kids. Stick to something fairly local, so there are no excuses to attend, meet new people and talk about books.

Start your own book club

Do a call-out online, or make some flyers to scatter around your neighbourhood, your local library included, and see who expresses interest then go from there. Include a mix of friends with people you don’t know to make things more interesting. Choose books that will generate conversation such as those with a controversial subject matter, or an interesting twist, or a complex moral dilemma at its heart. After all, the whole point of the book club is to talk about the book  – isn’t it?

Who makes the selection at any book club? Some book clubs rotate the member who gets to choose that month, while others just throw a few books up for discussion at the meeting and vote on what’s going to be next.

Online Book clubs

You don’t even need to leave the house now to belong to a club. A simple search online will open countless book club doors, with the most famous clubs being Reese’s Book Club and Oprah’s Book Club. However there are also many clubs held via Facebook groups, and on other social media sites.

The Better Reading Book Club

On the last Wednesday of every month, at 8pm, Better Reading hosts our live, interactive book club where you can join in the passionate conversation about books. Our book club is special because we have the author of the book we’re discussing on our panel, along with their publisher. All you have to do is head to our Facebook page at 8pm on the last Wednesday of every month. You can simply watch and listen. Or, you can type your questions into the Facebook comments section and we’ll read those out to the author.