Hi Carly, What a wonderful thing! I wish you a lot of success! To be honest, books club scare me a bit, so I've always been reluctant to join meetings. I think my biggest fear is what you called 'if someone gets obnoxious', especially since I am surrounded by people who've studied literature and languages. And though I read and write more than them, sometimes I can feel intimidated because I can't articulate as well or contrasts with writings styles, etc. So my suggestions would be either - to make it a specific book club, either for students, graduates, or people who read one certain type of book or enjoy the same genre (or something completely else but to have a specific focus or - to spend the first meeting discussing some ground rules on how you discuss the book, so that everyone feels comfortable and feels heard in the group Best, G.
Are the other members people you already know? I really think you may be worrying too much, running a book club isn't that hard--especially if you're all already friends. Probably the most complicated problem is how to decide what to read, but as long as you give everyone at least some say it'll be fine. Honestly my only disaster stories were all caused by myself, because sometimes my taste runs to works that are... Decidedly not mainstream. After a while I always end up picking something too inaccessible and everyone else just sort of drifts off. Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers was a particularly disastrous choice...
