The Racketeers meet in the local pub in Bolton

Setting up a new readers' group
Penguin was the first publisher to have its own website dedicated to providing a service for Reading Groups. Here we give you our top tips on setting up your own group.

Join an existing group
How to find a group near you if you don't want to set up your own group and would rather join an established group.

Our first meeting 
What exactly happens at the very first meeting of the group? A member of the West Side Readers' Group in the Shetlands tells us about her pre-meeting nerves...

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Setting up a new readers' group

Group size and type
Intimate or not? The size of a group and the type of people involved will make a huge difference to the type of discussions you will have. Are you aiming for a serious and scholarly session, or are you more concerned with having a laugh and making friends? Tale a look at the Group of the Month page to get inspiration from other readers' groups and to find out how they work.

Where to find new members
You can look for readers amongst your friends and colleagues or you can advertise for members in libraries and bookshops or on the Penguin Readers' Group Directory.

Who gets to choose the books?
Decide upon a title selection policy. Will your group's interest be genre specific (eg science fiction, crime, etc.) Will the group discuss a number of possibilities and then vote on an answer? Should the privilege go to the host / hostess? Experiment and see what works best for you, good planning makes for fewer arguments later on. If you have trouble beginning, maybe you could start with books that have won prizes. Whatever policy you decide upon, the key criteria is that the books you choose should encourage debate and discussion. Don't forget to look at the Penguin Readers' Group Website each month for your chance to win books for the whole group.

Your place or mine?
Public or private? Some people like the conviviality of going to other people's houses, some find it intimidating and prefer a more anonymous venue. Likely public venues include bookshops, cafes and libraries or even, like the Racketeers from Bolton (above), the local pub. One thing to bear in mind are refreshments. Would a latte or cappuccino be appropriate, or maybe a glass of wine to help members relax and open up? Bear in mind that libraries may have a problem with alcohol. Paramount is consistency: will it be once a fortnight or once a month? How long should it last? Who is in charge of sending out reminders? Some groups find it useful to draw up an agenda, clearly dividing book and social time; it's all too easy to get side-tracked, especially if the wine is flowing, as the Racketeers have learned from experience!

Discussion format
Some groups choose to have a professional leader (though this is more common in the US), someone who will ensure focused discussion and who will have substantial background knowledge. In the US, some companies foot the bill for leader-led lunchtime discussions; something it's worth mentioning to your HR department! Some libraries or bookshops are happy to supply leaders. It usually helps to begin by reading sections out loud; this effectively focuses everyone and brings the book back into everyone's mind.

Some groups find it useful to allot a certain number of questions for each member to ask, this ensures everybody has input and that there is a diversity of perspective and opinion. Remember, try to encourage open-ended questions. Concerning contentious topics, tread carefully at first - as a suggestion, try to avoid books about religion, politics or sex on a first outing. These could prove embarrassing or inflammatory among a newly formed group. We can happily recommend titles that have been tried and tested by reading groups. Read other groups' reviews on our Group of the Month page.Most importantly, remember there is no right or wrong in literary criticism or appreciation, so be kind, listen, take your turn, share, and enjoy!

Penguin/Orange Readers' Group Prize
Did you know that Penguin sponsors an annual prize for the best reading group in the country? Last year our winners were the Racketeers, an all male group who meet in a pub in Bolton. They won a weekend at Edinburgh International Book Festival for the whole group. Don't forget to enter your group for the Penguin/ Orange Readers Group Prize in 2007!


Join an existing group
If you don't want to go to all the effort of organising your own group, why not join an established group? Most libraries have reading groups now so it is worth checking there and in your local book shop. You can also look on the Penguin Readers' Group Directory to find a group near you - or you can put up a notice that you are looking to join a group in your area.
 

West Mainland Readers Group: Bonhoga Gallery, January 2003

Teatime.  

'They'll all have read loads of stuff I've never heard of,' I tell my husband disconsolately.

'You can talk about the fat one my mum gave you.'

I brighten.  'The fat one' was The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, so new it's still in hardback, and by an impeccably literary author.  I've only just finished it, so it's clear in my mind.  What's more, I can still remember enough about his first book, Under the Skin, to be able to refer to that, if pushed.  Other than that, for tonight I could be busking it, listening with my best interested expression and volunteering only safe remarks.  Next time will be easier; at least I'll have read the book.  I'm looking forward to being challenged by something new; it's so easy to get into a reading rut, with safe authors. 

 In theory I'm looking forward to it; in practice right now I'm nervous, convinced I'll be the group low-brow, a classics and detective story addict in an art-gallery of intellectual new author readers. 

 And what does one wear to these gatherings?  Is it going to look like a Hampstead literary gathering, twin-sets or designer casual?  I've never quite got the hang of smart-casual; my casual clothes are suitable for Interesting Occupations like gardening or messing about with boats.  Maybe I should go for smart - but I've been feeling shivery all day, and the gallery's heating is an unknown quantity.  I decide to play safe with a decent jersey and clean jeans.  This is Shetland; everyone else will be feeling the cold too.

Squelch out to the car.  The threatened snow hasn't come, but there's enough wind to make me glad we didn't bother to shift the bags of pony-nut ballast out of the Berlingo. Lights on, out onto three miles of single track road, another five of two-lane, then back to single track for the last few hundred yards. We're meeting in the Bonhoga Gallery, a water-mill become an exhibition space, with little rooms panelled in red-gold pine, linked by an open staircase.  At the back, there's a cafe in the conservatory; that's where we'll be.  The sound of the mill stream greets me as I clamber out of the car. Only two others in the parking space, and only the voice of Mary, the Visual Arts Development Officer of the Shetland Arts Trust, as I walk in; she's on the phone, gestures me downwards to the cafe.  I meet Alex, the Literature Development Officer, in the doorway, heading up to get wine; we say hello, and he waves me downwards, adding, 'The books are on the table.'

So they are, William Boyd's Any Human Heart, spread out in a pattern of marine blue.  I haven't been in a bookshop since September; I'd forgotten what a bonny sight a pile of crisp, new books is.  I resist the urge to start reading now, pace quietly until the first person arrives.  Kathleen, the deaconess for our parish; she comes into school for assemblies.  She's almost retired, and is looking forward to doing lots of reading - she's saving a special pile of new books, bought on trips south. I'm doubtful about the retirement theory; I read far less in the summer holidays than I do during termtime.
 
Alex starts serving up wine; pity I'm driving.  A group of folk pile in, led by another 'kent face', Bo, who, with her husband,  runs a beautiful eighteenth century house as a hotel/ restaurant out much further west (ten miles of single track, with road works).  At the end of the group, our Focused learning teacher, Lee; the next pair arrives on her heels, the Voe contingent, with Fiona, whom I first met on board Shetland's tall ship, a converted Fifie, the Swan, on a trip half way round Shetland (I'd expected to go northwards, to Baltasound, but found when I joined half way that the winds had been favourable for doing that bit first, and we were now going south to Fair Isle instead, for the Contemporary Music Festival.  It was a wonderful trip - sunshine, fair winds and accompanying dolphins on the way home.) - I try to remember what Fiona had been reading then; something technical about diving, I think... normally she's below the water instead of on it.  Or, in her professional life, measuring it out to add to tincture of wolfsbane or foxglove (she's a pharmacist).  Drinks all round. 

Eleven of us, nine women, two men, ages ranging from early twenties to retired. Alex starts us off, explaining what other groups have done, introducing this month's read, and then we start chatting generally about books.  I fire The Crimson Petal and the White into the first suitable silence and sit back to listen, duty done, relieved we escaped a round-the-table my name is.  When the conversation moves to children's books, Philip Pullman and the radio adaptation, the Harry Potter films, the ending of Captain Corelli, I join in happily.  But we're not getting off the round robin that lightly - someone asks for one. Oh dear.  Alex suggests name, a bit of information and what we're reading now.  Hmmm... I was afraid this would happen, and now my bolt's shot.  I do a worried mental survey of my bedside table. Problem is, I only read one book at a time, and the one I've just finished is a green and white Penguin circa 1947 by a new discovery, John Trench.  I'm so busy worrying about what I'm going to say that I don't really take in what others are saying, which just shows how little it works...

My turn.  Marsali - I'm a teacher - the Oxford History of the Bible - and (bravely nailing my colours to the mast) I'm not very well up in modern literature, I'm an addict of old detective novels. Then Kathleen, and I'm too relieved it's over to hear what she says, but we have a nice chat about Iain Rankin later; she's seen the coffins from The Falls in the Chambers St Museum.  Fiona's reading a biography of 'a man whose wife financed him to buy a steel-hulled yacht and sail off with a succession of bimbos while she stayed home with the kids'.  And finally, Robin, a retired doctor who finds that he isn't getting half as much reading done as he'd expected, is working through a book about quantum physics - I think, but perhaps that was a metaphor. 

Phew.  Breathe again and go back to chatting.  Now, of course, I remember that there's loads of respectable books on my to-read pile: Antonia Fraser's Warrior Queens, along with several other historical biographies, Daniel Deronda, once I've forgotten the TV serial, a book of essays on Jane Austen, English Passengers... too late to mention them.  Besides, it doesn't look as if it's going to be that sort of group at all.  I can relax and enjoy myself.  It's really interesting learning about other people's reading habits: for a start, everyone but me seems to be a simultaneous-multi-book reader, which is something that wouldn't have occurred to me, though I suppose running one fiction, one non-fiction might be possible...  There also seems to be a general tendency not to read a book more than once.

During the next half hour we decide to meet again in the cafe next time, on the ... the ... (long comparison of diaries and several re-dates due to the pace of life in the country)... the 5th March, and to bring food and wine with us.  Something to worry about for next time: how can I dare put my baking on a table with Bo's?  Maybe I'll go for wine or crisps or peanuts...

Okay.  Meeting over, we head out into the night, clutching our pristine copies of Any Human Heart.  Happy reading!

Go to our Group of the Month pages to read more readers group reviews.