Written for Malachain: the essentials, without the noise.
Book clubs fail when the books are too long and the dates keep moving. Fix the day, keep it monthly, choose books under three hundred pages for the first year and rotate who picks. Meet somewhere with no pressure to buy anything expensive, and agree that reading only half the book is still a reason to come.
Give the conversation a loose shape: one favourite passage each, one thing that annoyed you, then open discussion. Six to eight members is ideal, enough for opinions to differ and few enough for everyone to speak. The best clubs are less about the books than about the regular evening with the same faces, and that is a perfectly good reason to start one.
There is more to learn on this subject, and the linked website goes into greater depth. Treat this article as an introduction rather than the final word, and check any important decision against up-to-date, reliable sources before relying on it.
If you try any of these ideas, start small and adjust them to your own situation. What works for one person will not suit everyone, and it is fine to keep only the parts that help. Writing down what you changed, and what happened, makes it much easier to see after a few weeks whether the effort was worthwhile.
The most useful step is usually the first one. Pick a single suggestion, try it for a couple of weeks, and then decide whether it is worth keeping. Small, steady improvements last longer than ambitious plans that are hard to maintain once everyday life gets busy again.