Holiday Book Club: Favorite Book Exchange
If you host a holiday book club party, you should do a book exchange! It’s a fun and affordable way to celebrate the season. We have done this for the past four years for our annual holiday book club gathering and everyone loves it.
For the party, everyone brings a book, wrapped with a “blind date” description of the book. A blind date description simply means you list a few key facts about the book, without giving away the title or author.
How to Do a Book Exchange
For the book exchange, here’s how we do it. Everyone writes their name on a slip of paper and added it to a bowl. Each attendee then picked a name out of the bowl and you give your book to the person whose name you drew.
One at a time we then went around the table, read aloud the description of the book written on the tag or wrapping paper, and opened the book. People added their thoughts on the book, if they have read it, etc. It is always so delightful and there are usually a few books that people oohh and ahhh over.
After all the books were opened, everyone took a turn spinning the white elephant timer to pass the books left or right, swap or keep the book they had. We have done shaking dice in the past, but this was far less chaotic and easier. Multiple people said they were going to get the spinner for their family holiday parties.
It was so fun and easy and everyone left with a GREAT book to enjoy over the holidays. I’m still smiling!
Book club or not, this was a fun party to host during the holidays or anytime.
Best Books for a Book Exchange
We had no rules for the book exchange except that it should be a book that you loved or that you have heard great things about. The books could be used or new. Here are the favorite books that were given for our 2025 gathering.
Book Exchange Tips
My only tip is to have a couple extra books in case someone forgets a book or feels shy about giving a book. I had a few extra books and it made it more fun to have everyone be able to open a book.
Our book club has been going strong for 10 years. Here’s a post answering commonly asked questions about it.