Which book club is right for you?

By Ariel

Full-size versus mini kits

Here at Busy Nest News, we realize that every book club has unique needs. That is why we have many options to choose from including our mini and full-size book club kits.

The Busy Nest News mini book club kit, also known as the “one and done” is an updated version of what we currently consider a typical book club experience. The kit contains discussion questions, tips on how to run a book club, icebreakers, and one group activity. The core of any book club experience is the discussion questions. Our questions are quality. These will not be your run of the mill, “what did you think of x, y, and z?” Our questions will push you to dig into the content and come up with new ideas. They do not assume that you are reading this book because you already agree with what the author has to say. They are developed for those who have come to question and learn. If you are willing, we will help to expand your horizons. Our ice breakers are creative, thought-provoking questions chosen so that even old friends might learn something about each other. The icing on the cake is the group activity. We choose our group activity to maximize engagement and minimize hassle for the discussion leader. Our activity will encourage full group participation with minimal effort on your part.

The “one and done” is ideal for a book club that regularly meets in-person. If you want to talk through the book in one session; this is the right size kit for you. The mini kit is also ideal for a brand group just figuring out what kind of book club they want to be. Or even an established book club wanting to expand into non-fiction.

For those book clubs looking for a more in-depth experience, we offer a larger book club kit. Our full-size kit is what we lovingly refer to as “the whole kit and caboodle.” If the mini kit is a typical book club experience; think of the full kit as the deep dive. It consists of two complementary booklets - the Discussion Leaders Guide and Member’s Only Journal, ice breakers, discussion questions, and supplemental materials. The Discussion Leader’s guide provides leaders with everything they need to run a book club. In the guide you will find tips for running a book club, discussion questions, challenges, and numerous group activities meant to spark conversation and learning within the group as a whole. The Member’s Only Journal is meant for personal study. It is designed to encourage personal reflection before full group conversation. The questions, journal prompts, and introspective activities included in the journal challenge us to do the deeper learning before we engage these new ideas with the whole group. The Member’s Only Journal also contains a Busy Nest News special, our pre-reading questions. More commonly referred to as the PRQs, these questions are designed to gauge our understanding of key concepts in the book before reading. Using PRQs we can look back and see how we have grown.

Additionally, the full-size kit contains discussion questions and challenges beautifully displayed on social media-ready images. These images allow you to utilize our kits virtually. Last but not least, each kit contains supplemental materials. Supplemental materials might be stickers, bookmarks, printable quotes, and much more. To see a full list of supplemental materials for a specific kit you can check the description of each kit in our online store.

The “whole kit and caboodle” was designed with virtual discussion in mind. The discussion question images are specifically designed to be posted to social media, allowing the conversation to unfold organically in the comments. If your book club meets entirely online this size kit is ideal for you. Or you might choose to use a full kit if you meet in-person regularly, but want to start the conversation online. Using the full-size kit to run a hybrid, online and in-person book club, provides members with the best of both worlds. In this way, members can get the most out of the book and the book club kit. Since the full kit contains all of the pieces that make a Busy Nest News book club kit unique, it is also the best option for individuals who need more flexibility. The Members Only Journal allows individuals to work at their own pace - bringing what they can to the discussion when they can.

Now that you have decided to be a “whole kit and caboodle” crew, don’t wed yourself to that idea. You and your book club may be used to using one kit as opposed to the other. But there can be a time and place for both if you are open to being flexible. For example, summers are always more hectic than we anticipate and many book clubs choose to hit pause. Rather than pause, maybe your in-depth full-size-kit-loving crowd can dial it down a notch and share a more leisurely discussion with a mini kit. Whether using a mini or the beefier full-size kit, Busy Nest News book club kits are meant to flex with you, taking the anxiety out of planning a book club, so you can enjoy what book clubs are all about - reading great books and nourishing life-long friendships.

In addition to scaling options, we have military editions for many of our kits. The military editions contain our usual engaging content - questions, journal prompts, activities, challenges, etc. with additional questions and activities specific to the military community. For more information on our military editions, visit our online store.

For more details on available kits, visit our online store.