The book club I am part of (The Bookies) have had a fun exchange that we have taken part in for the past three years. I recently posted about it here. It is a lot of fun and a great summer break idea for your book club or for you and your friends just to read really great books.
Here is the basic layout of how to do it.
- Pick a date when you ask each person in your group to bring a wrapped book to the group. (*we encourage brown wrap so people do not choose by the packaging 😉 )
- MOST IMPORTANTLY – The book everyone brings NEEDS to be a book the giver has read and liked very much if not LOVED.
- Inside the front cover of the book place a post it note saying why you loved the book so much and if you want the receiver to keep it or return it after is read.
At your gathering you each choose a book and what you pick is what you read. When you meet up again, you each share the book you read, who gave it to you and what you thought of it. It is a lot of fun.
Our group does this every June so in July during our annual picnic, we share what we each read instead of a whole group book review like we do the rest of the year.
This year some of the books that made this exchange were:
Lethal by Sandra Brown (this is the book I picked out of the pile)
Boy In The Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist
City Of Bones by Cassandra Claire
My favorite part of the whole process is to listen to what everyone thinks about the books. As you can see above we had some pretty amazing books in the group and a couple really deep ones (Night and Boy In The Striped Pajamas – two books that I think everyone must read. For the most part everyone really enjoyed the book they picked. As readers, at least I know for myself… I love it when a freind recommends that next great read.
Book Journey 
That is awesome. Do you chose who gets the book you bring or is it just a grab from the pile?
Everyone chooses from the pile – it is a random pick 🙂 I love it!
My book club is doing an exchange in August but we won’t wrap the books. We’re going to tell everyone else about the book we read and then someone will claim the book. We’ll choose some of them for the whole club to read later in the year.
Fun! I hope you post about it Kathy!
Great ideas for book club and really get some new discussion going.
It is fun to do things out of the norm occasionally… it keeps it exciting and fresh 🙂
What a great idea! I have copied the books you entombed onto my “to read” list 🙂
Awesome. There were some great selections in there. I was really impressed with our group for sharing some deeper reads.
Thanks for sharing this! I will definitely be trying a book exchange with my book groups later this year.
I am glad! When we first tried it we thought it would be a one time thing but it actually has been great. We used to have a “free read” for our July meeting and now we have switched to this. 😀
Great idea. Kathy’s book club’s idea is good also, where you each give a pitch for your book and see who wants it, but I wonder what happens with the last person. They get the last book left 🙂 The early bird gets the worm, lol.
Rita_h @ My Home of Books
Right! I love the ideas!
Lovely idea. I wonder whether a virtual version of this would work too
Share your idea! 🙂 I like it!
We do our book exchange at Xmas. The books are wrapped, the fancier the better, someone, usually me, reads from The Night Before Christmas and every time I read the word “and” the books are passed from one person to another. You start with the book you brought and hopefully don’t end up with it! The books are always used.
Funny story – one year a member forgot to bring a book and was coming straight from work so she just grabbed a book out of the breakdown. It was some ratty old romance none of us would ever read! I ended up with it and she was so embarrassed! It still cracks me up to think about it!
Sounds like fun! I have Whiskey Beach waiting to be read….
We do this every month at our book club and it works great. It helps pass along books to new homes that will enjoy the book too.
Every month? WOW!
Sounds like a great way to find out about awesome new reads – which book did you get this time?
LETHAL by Sandra Brown.
Was one of them wrapped in a Kleenex? Too funny… it’s like foreshadowing.
That is funny – I had not noticed until you said that 🙂 I was not there this year for this event as I was at camp – they picked a book for me.
That’s nice.
I love the idea of doing this during the summer and/or for Christmas! I’m going to suggest to my book club that we do this for our November meeting – great idea Sheila! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Sure! It is a lot of fun and takes you out of the “normal” book club meeting and review. 😀
We do this at Christmas, but we never do make it to the point of discussing what we received. 🙂
THANKS for sharing about your book club. It seems awesome.