Nonfiction breaks most book club question lists, because the standard ones are about character and plot. "Who did you relate to?" does not get you far in a book about the history of the shipping container.
A nonfiction discussion needs three different questions at its center: what is the argument, what is the evidence, and where is the author’s thumb on the scale. Everything below builds out from those.
The three-question spine
- What is the argument, in one sentence? Have everyone write it down before anyone speaks, then compare. The differences are the meeting. A book whose thesis five readers state five ways has either a rich argument or a muddy one, and finding out which is worth twenty minutes.
- What is it built on? Interviews, archives, statistics, the author’s own experience, other people’s books? Different evidence supports different weight, and most readers never look.
- Where is the author standing? Every nonfiction writer has a position. Naming it is not an accusation — it is how you read the book accurately.
Argument and structure
- What is the claim, and what would count as evidence against it?
- Where is the argument strongest? Where does it thin out?
- What does the author take as obvious that you would want defended?
- Why is the book in this order? What would a different order have emphasized?
- Is there a chapter that could be cut without loss? What does that tell you?
- Does the introduction promise the book you actually read?
- What is the counterargument, and does the author engage it or wave at it?
Evidence
- Pick one striking claim. What is it sourced to? Go and look.
- Are the numbers doing what the sentences say they are doing?
- Whose voices are quoted at length, and whose are summarized?
- How much of this rests on anecdote, and does that matter here?
- Is anyone conspicuously absent from the book?
- How old is the research, and has anything changed since?
The first one is the best exercise in this whole list. Everyone picks a claim that struck them and checks the note. It takes ten minutes and it changes permanently how a group reads nonfiction.
The author
- What is the author’s relationship to this subject? Insider, outsider, participant, scholar?
- Who is this written for? You can usually tell from the first ten pages.
- What is the author trying to get you to do or feel by the end?
- Do you trust them? On what basis — credentials, tone, transparency, or that they agree with you?
- What would this book look like written by someone with the opposite position?
Ideas and application
- What did you already believe that this confirmed? Be suspicious of that part.
- What changed your mind, and how much?
- What did you already know but had never seen stated plainly?
- What does this book ask you to do differently? Is that reasonable?
- Which idea will still be with you in a year?
- What did you have to look up?
"What did this confirm that you already believed" is the most useful question on this page. It gets a group to notice when they liked a book because it flattered them, which is the main hazard of reading nonfiction in a group of people who agree.
Craft
- Is it well written, separately from whether it is right?
- Does the author use narrative to carry the argument? Where does that help and where does it obscure?
- Was it the right length?
- Would this have been better as a long article? Be honest.
That last one is not a cheap shot. A great many nonfiction books are an excellent essay at book length, and noticing it is a real critical observation rather than a complaint.
Extra questions by type
| Type | Add these |
|---|---|
| Memoir | What does the author remember suspiciously well? Who else is in this story and did they consent? What is the gap between the person in the book and the person writing it? |
| History | Whose sources survived, and whose did not? What does the author do where the record is silent? Is the past being used to argue about the present? |
| Science and health | Is this settled or contested? What is the strength of evidence for the central claim? Is the author reporting research or selling an approach? |
| Business and self-improvement | Would this advice work for someone without the author’s advantages? What is the survivorship problem here? What is the actual mechanism? |
| Faith and spirituality | What tradition is the author writing from, and do they say so? What is asserted and what is argued? Where would a thoughtful reader from another position push back? |
| Current affairs | How will this read in ten years? What is the author’s prediction, and what would falsify it? |
Running it well
Do not let it become a policy debate. The most common failure. Keep pulling back to the book: what does the author say, on which page, on what basis? A group can argue about immigration for two hours without discussing the book about immigration they all read.
Assign chapters if it is long. For a dense 500-page book, have each person take responsibility for one section and summarize it. Completion rates go up and the discussion is better.
Let people disagree with the author out loud. Nonfiction groups are often oddly deferential. "I think chapter six is wrong" is a great sentence and it needs someone to say it first.
Keep the three-question spine visible. Written on a card on the table. It is what stops a nonfiction discussion drifting into general conversation.
Mixing fiction and nonfiction
Alternating is good for a group that has settled into one lane. Two practical notes: nonfiction takes most people longer per page, so allow six weeks rather than four; and pick a nonfiction title with a story in it for the first one — narrative nonfiction is a much easier bridge than an argument-driven book.
For novels, the equivalent set is in book club questions for any novel, and everything around the discussion — scheduling, hosting, the person who talks too much — is in how to host a book club.
Start with the one-sentence exercise
At the next meeting, before anyone speaks, have everyone write the book’s argument in one sentence and read them out in turn.
You will get the shape of the whole discussion in four minutes, and you will find out immediately whether the group read the same book.
A page of notes per title is worth keeping for nonfiction more than for fiction, because the arguments accumulate — our book review notepad works for it, and how to set up a reading journal covers where it lives.