Running a technical book club

@secoif Hey, I saw your SingaporeJS book club! Reaching out to you to ask for any pointers/resources in starting a technical book club.

— Marc Ignacio (@pd_i) April 20, 2016

The SingaporeJS Community has been running a weekly, technical “Book Club” for about 3 years, on & off. This was originally an initiative of my wife Wei Lu, who co-organises the event with me, and co-authored this post. We try to assign around one hour of reading per week — this usually equates to one or two chapters. The meetup takes place at our home after work on a Tuesday with around ten people and lasts from 1.5 to 2 hours.

Raison d’être

It’s not always easy to finish technical books when you’re reading alone. Reading together as a part of the Book Club ensures you’ll eventually get through the whole thing, while gaining a much deeper insight though discussion with peers. In fact, the discussion is often better than the book!

A weekly Book Club lightly peer-pressures you into reading at least a little something each week so you have something to offer in the group discussion.

When reading alone, if you stop reading for two weeks you might easily give up on reading the book altogether, however with peer pressure of Book Club, even if you miss a week or two you’ll still get yourself “dragged” through the book. Inevitably, some people do show up without reading the book, but just listening to the discussion will help understanding the key points.

Books we’ve read

It’s not easy to always pick a book that balances both accessibility & educational value while also attracting and maintaining the interest of attendees.

These are the books we’ve worked through, along with my totally subjective, personal rating out of 5:

• 7 languages in 7 weeks (4 stars)
• The Architecture of Open Source Applications (3.5 stars)
• High Performance Browser Networking (5 stars)
• High Performance Websites (3 stars)
• DOM Enlightenment (3.5 stars)
• Functional JavaScript (3 stars)
• Effective JavaScript (5 stars)

Attendance usually spikes when the book changes, and drops to its lowest towards the end of the book. It’s important to not linger too long on the same book.

What didn’t work — single presenter

We really had no idea how to run these events for the first few books. Originally we had a person assigned as the “chairperson”, who would guide discussions around the week’s readings and deliver a summary of the key points.

Photo credits: Steve Potay Teo

What worked — everybody presents

Sharing is the price of admission

Explain it like I’m five

SingaporeJS book club’s future