6 Questions to Ask for Organizing and Managing a Buddy Read

I was looking through some of my posts in early June when I came up with an idea. I was looking through my post 12 Tips for Approaching a Goodreads Reading Challenge (Or Any Reading Challenge) when I read the 7th tip. The 7th tip was to do a buddy read or two if you have friends and/or family members who are readers.

Buddy reads can be hard to set up, organize, and manage. Even if you want to do it, it can be daunting to break into it and start doing buddy reads. Hopefully, this post will help in setting up and run a buddy read or two. Here are 6 questions to ask for organizing and managing a buddy read.

Question 1: What are you going to read?

Deciding on what you'll read is probably the most important question to answer. It'll be easiest to choose a book everyone in the buddy read has a copy of. However, there are ways to go about doing a buddy read if not everyone has the book. (I.e. the library, loaning apps like Libby and Overdrive, if someone has an extra copy, etc.)

Question 2: Are you going to set a pace for the read?

Is everyone going to try to read a chapter a day, or are you all going to read it in your own time? Answering these questions will help you decide how you'll go about reading the book in the buddy (or group) read. Also, deciding if you'll do any reading when you meet up is a good thing to decide if you decide to meet up.

Question 3: How are you going to meet up?

Are you going to meet up in person or virtually? If you meet up in person, where are you meeting up? If you're meeting up virtually, are you doing it via a phone call, Zoom call, or another virtual meet-up application?

Question 4: When will you meet up?

Will you meet up regularly during the buddy read during the time you're reading? If so, when? Deciding on when you'll meet up can be time-consuming because we all have lives outside of the buddy read. However, it can be so useful to have this all sorted before you begin your buddy read.

Question 5: Will you meet up during the time you read the book?

Reading the book together, in real-time can be a fun aspect of a buddy read. Whether you meet over a call, FaceTime, Zoon, another call app, or in person, deciding when and how you'll meet up to read the book can be fun to do. And you'll have someone, in the moment, to turn to with certain scenes.

Question 6: Will you meet up when everyone is done with the book?

Meeting up when everyone, including yourself, is done with the book gives you the opportunity to go over and discuss the book one final time during your buddy read. It doesn't matter what exactly about the book you discuss, but it can be a nice little wrap-up to the buddy read. (Of course, you can always talk about the book later, but this is in relation to the buddy read itself.)