With the rising popularity of literary festivals around the world and groups like Oprah’s Book Club garnering massive amounts of attention, hosting a book party at home can be a pleasant way to bring people together, such as friends or coworkers. The best thing about book parties is that the content is already built it.
Use the Home Collection
Many people have a collection of books in their homes, some of them untouched for years. Some people simply have a small bookshelf in the corner, others have various coffee table books and more extreme literary enthusiasts may have a room full of books from floor to ceiling. Whatever the size of your home collection, it can be a good starting point for the content of a book party.
The selection of books from your home collection can be based on date published, topic or author, in order to create specific displays. Books that are rare and published many decades ago can be hidden literary gems and may surprise many of your guests with their relevancy. The idea in selection is to choose books to display that will generate various types of simultaneous discussions among your guests.
When the book selection is finished, tables can be arranged in different parts of the home, thereby forcing people to mingle the crowd to see what books are on display and what conversations are occurring. A book party has to be more than just a book club, where one person reads and everyone listens. It is also undesirable that everyone discusses the same book. However, it is desirable to create an atmosphere similar to a bookstore, where guests walk around looking at and reading books, except that during the book party they will chat with people they meet. To ensure an amicable atmosphere, guests can be invited to bring along four or five of their own books for everyone to experience.
Keep the Peace
To avoid heated conversations, do not select books about contentious topics. Displaying books based on polarising topics is one of the fastest ways to ruin the atmosphere at a book party. Not only will it cause variances between guests, but also between your guests and yourself, since you may be the owner of most of the books.
To ensure a positive atmosphere, invite individuals with personalities and interests in line with the books selected. For example, some of the guests may work in a particular field, such as advertising. While others may not work in advertising, those guests that are interested in advertising will still find those books intriguing and will surely engage the advertising professionals in a discourse about their field. Not that the guests should always agree with each other, but the book party will not be entertaining if guests are arguing about abortion or stem cell research.
A book party should have a theme, based on the commonalities between the guests. Since you will presumably know the guests, the direction of the book party should be entertaining for everyone.
A book party does not have to be boring and guests will love the fact that the books can be used as conversation starters to meet new people.
