5 Icebreakers for Your Next Book Club Meeting

Whether you’re starting a new book club from scratch or joining a preexisting one, it can be nerve-wracking getting to know each other at first. Enter icebreakers. And no, not the cringe-worthy ones you remember from your school years. Get the conversation started and keep it going with these 5 excellent icebreakers perfect for book clubs. Best of all, they can be done in virtual meetings, too!

Rapid Fire Questions

Who doesn’t love watching Vogue’s 73 Questions series on YouTube? Play a shorter, bookish version with each of your book club members to get to now them quickly. We recommend sticking to around 10 questions for each person and allowing a minute or two with each person to discuss their answers more in detail if any surprise you. Here are some questions that can get your started:

1. What was the first book you remember reading?
2. What books are on your bedside table currently?
3. What’s one book or author you can’t stand?
4. Which fictional character would you be best friends with?
5. Which would you ask to write a biography for you?
6. What’s your favorite genre?
7. What’s your OTP (one true pairing)?
8. What book needs a sequel?
9. What was your last 5 star read?
10. Where do you read?

Extend the Ending

The one’s bound to get your creative juices flowing. Take a classic or a book that everyone has read and have everyone come up with what they think would happen in an epilogue. Have everyone share their ideas and then vote for what epilogue would be the most likely or the most satisfying!

Casting Call

So many books have been (or will be!) getting the movie/TV treatment (see: The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi or the Sweet Magnolia series by Sherryl Woods). Play casting director with your book club and come up with a dream cast for a recent read! You can do this one of two ways: have everyone cast all their characters and share or go around in the circle and have each person cast a character one by one. The second method is more challenging as you’ll have to take other people’s casting decisions into consideration.

Two Read, One DNF

This is a twist on an icebreaker classic: two truths and one lie! Instead of everyone going around saying two truths and one lie about themselves, they recall two books they’ve read and one they didn’t finish (or started for that matter!). Then have everyone take a guess as to which book was the DNF of the group. Make this more difficult by choosing one specific genre for everyone’s picks like historical fiction or romance!

Alphabet Authors

This is another bookish rift on a classic game you probably played as a kid. Pick a theme (in this case, authors!) and go around a circle taking turns coming up with an answer for each letter of the alphabet. For example, A is for Aimee Agresti, B is for Brenda Novak, C is for Catherine Adel West and so on. If someone gets stuck on one of their letters, see if someone else can figure out an answer. You can also try this game with book titles or characters if you’d like!

What icebreaker will you be using in your next meeting? Let us know in the comments below!

Are you also looking for some book club reading recommendations? Here are a few of our favorites:

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