Have you ever thought of starting your own book club? Spring is the perfect season to try something new. Why not send a feeler out to some friends and see if you can collect a group of four-ten readers, decide on a meeting place, and launch your club.

I started one a little over a year ago with three close girlfriends and eventually, the group has grown to a total of nine women. It has become one of the highlights of my month! At first, I was reluctant to include people who weren’t buddies of mine, but I’ve gained new friends from the experience. Not only that, but I’ve been forced to read books that I would never have chosen to read. From young adult fantasy to a collection of essays, I’ve never had any regrets about the books I was required to read.

Some book clubs have a theme. I know clubs that focus on Oprah’s book club picks, bestsellers, mysteries, romance, women’s fiction, and Christian fiction. I’ve heard about mother/daughter book clubs and there’s a teen book club that meets once a month in my neighborhood. Ours has no rules. When it’s your turn to pick, you can pick anything (oh, except for political books. None of want to read those) and the rest of us will read it, even if we grumble a bit before turning to page one.

We meet once a month in the morning at a café. This way, no one has to clean their house in preparation for our arrival and no one has to brew coffee or cook. Establishing a regular time and place is key. And don’t deviate from them if one person has a conflict. You can’t make everyone happy. On the same note, everyone won’t like the book chosen that month. That’s okay. In fact, it makes for a good discussion topic.

Okay, so now you’re interested in starting your own book club, but you’d like to figure out how to run your first meeting. For our inaugural meeting, I chose a book (The Thirteenth Tale) that came with a Reader’s Guide. Many books have guides listed on the author’s websites if not in the back of the book. The following website can clue you in on what lots of other book clubs around the country are reading and all the books listed here include excerpts, reviews, and reader’s guides. If you’re the leader of a book club, you may want to sign up for their newsletter. You could win enough copies of a particular book for your entire club. The site is called Book Movement and you can check it out at http://www.bookmovement.com/

Now let’s say that your current book club has been feeling a bit dull lately. You can shake things up by introducing an annual event for your members. For example, you could read a Diane Mott Davidson mystery and each member could cook a recipe from one of her many books (or you could have a Mexican fiesta by following the recipes listed in Chili Con Corpses!). I’m going to choose a Sherlock Holmes mystery for my next pick and I plan to cook a treat from Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook by Kathy Borich. If you haven’t seen this delightful cookbook before, then get yourself a copy. I’ve already made a soup and a dessert from this wonderful book. I totally agree with one of Amazon’s reviewers who states: “Appetite for Murder is much more than a cookbook. It is a witty rendering of some of the classic crime stories of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie, and more. This book not only brings meaning to its menus, it’s seasoned with scholarly and humorous quotes related to the recipes. Before the section on Swiss pastry, James Beard reminds us that “A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

If you don’t feel like dealing with food, then swap some other treats. Here’s a list of some things you can exchange:

• Paperbacks
• Bookmarks
• Gourmet chocolate (like the Two-piece Godiva box)
• Flavored coffee (those little bags that make one pot)
• A potted plant/flower
• A list of your top-ten favorite books
• The best recipe you’ve found in a piece of fiction
• Bookplates signed by an author

Lastly, you can liven up your book club by inviting a local author to attend. My advice is that you purchase this author’s books in lieu of checking them out from the library, as you’ve got to make it worth his or her time to visit you. Many authors who live too far to see you in person are more than happy to phone-in to your meeting. I wouldn’t expect bestselling authors to do this, but the majority of mid-list level writers will. I know all of the Cozy Chicks would be perfectly thrilled to entertain your club.

If anyone else has pointers for a book club, please tell us about them. Otherwise, happy group reading, folks!