How to Start a Book Club for Senior Citizens

Make a list of local retirement facilities. If you want to bring your book club to senior citizens, this is an excellent place to begin. You can find facilities by exploring your neighborhood on foot or in your car, checking your local yellow pages, browsing the websites of facilities in your area and speaking with friends and family members that may have relatives at one of these centers. A quick web search of "[YOUR CITY] Retirement Home" is usually enough to turn up a few local facilities.

Contact the facilities and talk to an administrator about setting up a book club. Determine which day of the week would be best for meetings, how seniors will sign up for membership and how long each meeting will take. You must work with facility management if you are planning on working in a senior center or retirement community. Additionally

Build a list of potential books that your book club will read. It is better to plan your group̵7;s reading list in advance than to end up scrambling to find a title at the last minute. Spread your reading list across genres or devote it to specific areas of reading such as fiction or biographies ̵2; just remember to target your book list at a senior audience. Big bestsellers are usually available in large print, making them excellent starting choices. You should also focus on paperbacks, since they're less expensive and many seniors are on a fixed income.

Develop a leadership scheme for your group. Decide from the beginning if you are going to lead each meeting or take turns with the members. Rotating leadership allows each person to suggest books to read and moderate discussions, but some people may have a difficult time controlling a group conversation. If you choose to lead every meeting, the bulk of finding new works and collecting discussion questions will fall on you alone. If you're unsure how to proceed with leadership, talk to your group about which method they'd prefer.

Print out discussion questions for each book and bring them with you to meetings. Discussion questions are often available on publisher websites when related to a more popular book, or can be found online elsewhere if reading well-known classics. If not, draft them yourself. Discussion questions do not need to be followed verbatim, but should be drafted to provide your group with something to talk about if discussion otherwise runs dry. These questions should address important themes of the book but remain open for interpretation; for example, ask how readers felt about a specific character's actions or how they interpret the meaning of the title. You can also ask if members of your group agreed with decisions made by the writer, such as character deaths, romantic choices and the book's ending. The important thing about discussion questions is that they usually have no "right" answer and are instead matters of opinion.

Start your first meeting by introducing yourself and allowing your participants to do the same. Since no one will have done any reading, make this a short meeting devoted to choosing a book from your list, determining how much will be read before the next meeting and generally getting to know one another.