A lot of men’s reading groups begin the same way. A few friends agree over dinner that they ought to be reading something serious together. Someone suggests a book, everyone buys it, and the first meeting is lively. By the third or fourth meeting, two men have not finished the reading, one has a conflict, and the conversation drifts toward work and sports. By spring the group exists mainly as a text thread.
It does not have to go that way. At Meriwether Academy we run weekly men’s book club chapters in Nashville and Chattanooga, and the groups that hold together tend to share a handful of plain, unglamorous habits. None of them is complicated. All of them are easy to skip.
Choose books that can carry a conversation
The book decides more about a reading group’s survival than anything else. Men will show up for a hard book that gives them something to argue about. They will quietly stop coming for a pleasant book that leaves nothing to say.
That is a strong argument for reading older books. A work that has been read and fought over for centuries has proven it can sustain discussion. Plato’s dialogues, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, Shakespeare’s histories: each gives men something concrete to disagree about, and most connect directly to questions of character, duty, and public life that men care about. We have written more about what makes a great book great and about why old books reward the effort.
Contemporary nonfiction can work too, but be careful with books that make one argument and then repeat it for three hundred pages. They tend to produce one good meeting.
Make the reading fit a working man’s week
The most common cause of death in a reading group is unfinished reading. Men with jobs and families will not reliably get through a hundred pages a week, and once a man has missed the reading twice he starts missing meetings.
Set the weekly portion so a busy man can finish it in two or three sittings. Better still, choose a book that divides naturally into self-contained pieces. This is one reason our chapters read Plutarch’s Lives: each life is a complete story that can be read in a week, so a man who misses one week is not lost the next. Our Nashville and Chattanooga groups are working through them one life per week, in the order the volume prints them, skipping the comparisons.
Meet at the same time and place every week
Consistency does more than enthusiasm. A group that meets “every few weeks when we can find a date” spends half its energy scheduling. A group that meets every Wednesday at seven in the morning at the same coffee shop needs no scheduling at all. Men simply know where to be.
Early mornings work especially well for men’s groups. They rarely conflict with family evenings or work events, the men who come are the ones who really want to be there, and an hour of serious conversation is a good way to start a day. Our Nashville chapter meets early on Wednesday mornings in West Nashville; our Chattanooga chapter meets early on Tuesdays.
Weekly is better than monthly. A month is long enough to forget the last conversation and lose the habit.
Keep it small enough to talk
Eight to twelve regulars is a good size. Fewer, and one absence can derail a meeting. Many more, and some men never speak. If a group grows beyond that, split it rather than let it become a lecture with an audience.
Have someone lead, and give him a job
Leaderless discussion drifts. Someone should open each meeting with a short summary of the reading and one or two questions worth arguing about, then keep the conversation on the book. That role can rotate, but it should always belong to someone.
Good opening questions are specific. “What did you think?” produces silence. “Was Cato right to refuse to compromise, given what it cost Rome?” produces an hour.
Let men disagree
A reading group where everyone agrees is dull. The best discussions happen when men who respect each other take opposite sides of a real question and argue it out in good faith. Protect that. Discourage speeches, encourage follow-up questions, and make sure the quieter men get pulled in.
It also helps to keep current politics at arm’s length. Old books raise every enduring political question, and discussing them through Pericles or Cicero tends to produce better conversation than rehashing the week’s news.
Leave room for fellowship
Men come for the book but stay for the other men. Coffee before the discussion, an occasional dinner, a group outing once or twice a year: these are what turn a reading group into a brotherhood. The ancient symposium, which we wrote about in “The Art of Dining,” combined serious talk with food and wine for good reason.
Or join one that already exists
If you are in Middle Tennessee or Chattanooga, you do not have to start from scratch. Meriwether’s Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club meets weekly, is free to attend, and is open to any man willing to do the reading. You can see the full reading calendar and find your city’s chapter on that page. And if you would rather start one in your own town, write to us. We are glad to share how our chapters run.