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Is there a Book → Book Club / Reading Group service? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have a specific book I've been meaning to read for awhile. I've heard that while it's a great journey, it's a dense / heavy / slow read along the way. It sounds like it'd be fun to read it together with a group of likewise interested folks.

Is there a service for pulling together reading groups around specific books, rather than the more common way of gathering a group of people and then selecting books? I'm imagining a website that has a sign-up page for ~every book and when ~10 people sign up for a book they all get an email introducing them to each other. Like if there was a bus stop for every book & when enough people had gathered, a bus appears & they depart together.

Given list of all the books, this seems like a pretty easy thing to make. Does it exist yet?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe The Storygraph is working on creating something relatively similar on the longer term. Currently they have « buddy reads » - I've never used them but from what I understand you can sign up for a buddy read on a book and get matched with someone else?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the lead!

It looks like the Buddy Read feature does in fact start with a specific book and organize a group around it, but it invites me to specify all the people that will ever be in the group right away, at group creation time. I get three ways to invite people:

"Machine-learning powered reading buddy recommendations" - Unspecified voodoo. Three users are shown.
"Community members who have this book on their radar" - Probably folks that have this on their public 'to read' list. Three users are shown.
Specifying users directly by username

This doesn't quite fit the "I'm up for this, let me know when it starts" mechanic.

I could create a new group & invite all three of the users with this book in their public 'to read' list, but I think folks treat the the 'to read' list very, very casually -- not at the "I'm ready to commit to a reading group" level. These three users have 723, 2749, and 3771 books on their 'to read' lists respectively. I see that I somehow have have 46 books on mine, & haven't been thinking of it as a 'ready to commit to reading group' list.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the detailed test! I thought it would be an option for people who already opted in and not just having the book on their to-read :(

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I like the idea of this very much and I hope someone has made/does make it.

What's the book? Who knows, you might find the core of your group just by sparking interest in the book. Good luck :)