Article clubs are the best for SO MANY reasons.   Here is a list of the best things about an article club, in no particular order: 

• It’s WAY less time consuming than a book club.  No one has to read a whole book or be stressed by the fact that they haven’t had time to read the whole book before they show up. 

• The discussion is much more varied.  At an article club, the group of attendees choose several articles for the article club meeting and so the discussion ends up being more varied than 1 specific book.  We’ve even pick videos or clips from SNL.  At a book club, the topic of the meeting focuses on just the book and you spend so much time committing to reading a book, and then after you meet for that one evening or afternoon session, you move on to something else at the next meet up.

• There’s less of a commitment for preparation. We lead busy lives. So, readings articles or watching videos before the meeting is probably around a 15 minute commitment, whereas reading an entire book or novel, can take hours (depending on how fast of a reader you are).  I’m a slow reader, so book clubs have never really interested me because of that but article clubs are perfect.

• Anyone can attend, and they can attend last minute.  Usually, anyone is welcome at an article club meeting because there’s no huge time commitment of having to read a specific book before you come. You can read or skim the articles online on your phone quickly, and you can even show up at the article club without having read them.  Someone at the meeting will be happy to summarize the articles for you or you can watch the video before the discussion starts.

• When new people are invited to the article club meeting, it’s pretty easy for them to engage in conversation because they can get caught up by skimming the articles or getting someone to summarize it for them.

• The venue switches about once a month with your turn only coming about once a YEAR (assuming there are 10 people in your article club).  I’ve found that more people are interested in coming to an article club when there’s more people because you can switch off hosting responsibilities – making it less of a time commitment (showing up vs. hosting and showing up).  If you’re lucky, you can host in the summer and host it outdoors. You could do a BBQ, serve sangrias or make a signature drink.  Sometimes the wine bottles turn into tequila shots or whiskey tasting … 

• It’s a perfect way to catch up with your friends, or to meet new people that you wouldn’t normally meet.  As you get older, I find that it hard and harder to meet and make new friends.  With article club though, you get to meet friends of friends who come to the article club and either you connect or you don’t.  Sometimes you find you connect really well with some people and maybe you want to go out for coffee or go for a run together.  Others, however, you hope that they never come back to article club! (Both have happened to me.)